#534 - Robin Black

[0] Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] There's very few people in this life can say that they've gone from glam rock to expert MMA commentary and even fighting in MMA.

[4] Very few people other than you, Robin Black.

[5] There might be some lady out there somewhere, some chick, I don't know.

[6] Yeah, pretty weird.

[7] I tend to try to do stuff that I like.

[8] That's kind of my goal in life is do a bunch of stuff I like.

[9] That's a beautiful goal, man. And if everybody did that, we would have a lot more happy people in this world.

[10] Yeah, I think you're right.

[11] Yeah, you do a fantastic job.

[12] You work for the Fight Network in Canada, right?

[13] And you do a fantastic job of breaking down fights, and your enthusiasm is so contagious.

[14] It's really cool.

[15] Oh, thanks.

[16] I've really enjoyed watching those videos because as a person myself, who's a huge fan of fights and just, there's so many aspects that I think that maybe the cast.

[17] fan might miss or the person who has never trained or competed might miss and you do a great job of sort of encapsulating those really important moments and and and highlighting them and isolating them and you do it all with passion it's really fun man thank you that is the coolest thing anyone's ever said to me like i just i really fucking love doing these things like you could tell yeah i do like to spend hours sitting there and look at how beautifully these guys moves and the moment in time we're too unwilling guys are like they each are trying to choreograph their own thing right and what's going on psychically what's going on mentally like it honest to god i've done a lot of fun things and they all seem to kind of lead to this and if i can only do one thing for the rest of my life i'd spend my time in my little lab researching what's going on when two men fight like that's what i do with my life and that's what i do now and i absolutely love doing it yeah you could tell and um like i said as someone like me who's also a huge fan of MMA and a huge fan of watching two people try to figure each other out in the most dangerous and most the most high -stakes sport, I think, in the world.

[18] Maybe not the most dangerous as far as like, I mean, I guess like maybe NASCAR is probably more dangerous, dangerous, but the high stakes of the human hand -to -hand combat, to me, there's so much on the line, there's so much psychologically going on, and there's so many little things like I'm sure there's a lot that I'm missing if I watch basketball.

[19] I'm sure there's a lot that I'm missing if you watch football.

[20] But when it comes to striking and grappling and mixed martial arts, the variables are so gigantic.

[21] And the different approaches to overcoming those variables are so gigantic.

[22] Like you did a recent thing on Gunner Nelson.

[23] And Gunner Nelson, who is a jiu -jitsu expert and now an MMA fighter out of Iceland, who's a really interesting dude like super stoic yeah yeah fucking cold as ice never smiles never laughs he's a weird dude but wicked jiu jutsu i remember him from the just before he ever got into mama or high level mhm he beat monson fucking monson yeah who's a gorilla i remember seeing this little guy on monson's back i'm like who is that motherfucker like that guy's a beast how do you take jeff monson's back.

[24] Yeah, and it's, and that calmness, he uses that so intelligently.

[25] Like, I was, I'm reading this book, have you heard of this book, uh, the rise of Superman?

[26] No. Oh, dude, you have to read this book immediately.

[27] So this guy goes, and he has researched the biochemistry that's happening in the brain at the opportunity, at the moments where people feel like a surfer feels like at one with the wave, you know, where a free climber feels at one with the wall.

[28] There's actually biochemistry happening in the brain, and there's four neurotransmitters that are released simultaneously.

[29] And in that moment, there's all of these things that humans do better.

[30] One of them is pattern recognition.

[31] So when two guys are fighting, you can see patterns in how they move and predict outcomes, right?

[32] And different guys get into it in different ways.

[33] The bulk of the research is on action and adventure sports, like flipping motorcycles through the air five times and stuff.

[34] because those guys if they are not in that state they die right so the level now like there's exponential growth in what people can now do in that state because it's being sort of a global experiment that men are pushing each other further and further i mean everybody used to gather around to see uh evil can evil jump 10 buses now every day 10 guys do that and flip four times while doing it you know so the level of what people are able to mentally accomplish so that's happening and fighting and the thing and I'm obsessed with science so that what's going on physically is fascinating what's going psychologically but the science is crazy and that's kind of where my research is going now like if you could take an EEG and put it on their brain in the highest moments of combat what's going on in there one if you ever could do that because if they were in that highest moment of combat and they had an EEG on their brain would they be thinking the same because would they realize they had an EEG in their brain would it distract them well in theory if all these people screaming and you sitting at the side out of the cage and wearing your underpants getting punched in the face, if all that isn't distracting, a couple of things on your head.

[35] It's hard to say, though.

[36] I mean, the state, what you want to check with that EEG or something is the mental state, the biochemistry, the neurology happening in the brain.

[37] And if they're not in that state, you can't do it.

[38] But people have done it in other sports.

[39] They've done it and looked at what's happening in the brain.

[40] And there's something called hypofrontalism, where actually less is happening in the front of your brain during these moments of like perfect performance and that's what this book's about this guy is like like chemically analyzing the highest level of performance so to take that into fighting these guys are operating at that level now like the top guys Carlos Condit is operating at that level you know he's operating in moments of pure flow and when these guys are in those moments what's happening in that that's shit's fascinating like to look at fights and look and see that These guys are operating in the highest level of human performance and in that state against each other.

[41] They're fighting each other.

[42] It's crazy.

[43] Yeah, it's really fascinating.

[44] The book is called The Rise of Superman, and it's by a guy named Stephen Kotler, and it's got four and a half stars on Amazon .com, so that's a pretty good sign.

[45] It's a great book.

[46] I'm going to do a little breakdown on what's going on with pattern recognition in that state, and imagine you and I are both in that state, and you know that I'm starting to recognize patterns.

[47] You can lay traps for me by doing something, called chunking where you'll go one two three four and I'll start to recognize that pattern and anticipate it and you'll change one thing that pattern and hit right right so chunking use understanding that I'm predicting your patterns and using that against me like all of that kind of stuff just fascinates a shit out of me right now well that's always been a big thing about striking about changing up the speed of your approach and also throwing faints in pretending to go one way and going another there's all sorts of different things that people have done to try to offset a recognition.

[48] And each other's brains.

[49] Like your brain, the better your brain performs, the different I have to approach to make you pay for having such a good performing brain.

[50] You know what I mean?

[51] Like your brain can anticipate stuff.

[52] So I need to make you, make that a bad thing for you.

[53] Wow.

[54] So it's what it says here is that flow is caused by a mighty cocktail of five powerful chemicals from dopamine to serotonin.

[55] And that's interesting that I've never really thought about it that that they have all these chemicals flowing together i've always thought of it as just sort of a quote unquote state of mind you achieve a state of mind but this state of mind being a bunch of neurotransmitters are flowing together in the optimum levels yeah man like think of that the way uh like this your state of mind affects your emotion and your emotion affects your biochemistry and your biochemistry affects your performance so it's they're linked to each other right so that idea that guys get focused, that focus causes a biochemical change in their brain.

[56] This is the kind of shit I want to go to next on my breakdowns.

[57] Like start playing with this kind of stuff, and evolutionary things.

[58] You probably read that the hand, part of the reason it evolved the way it did was for fighting.

[59] Have you read that?

[60] Yeah.

[61] And the jaw and stuff.

[62] Yeah, the shape of a man's face.

[63] Exactly.

[64] So start looking at what that means and why the like the science of that kind of stuff is just starting to blow my mind.

[65] It is totally fascinating stuff.

[66] And it's also the thing about this achieving this flow state that's so maddening for people is that it just slips through your fingers.

[67] It's there and it's gone.

[68] You achieve these brief moments where you've seen it in basketball games where a guy just feels like you can't miss. He hits those three corners from the outside.

[69] In pool, I play pool a lot.

[70] There's these moments.

[71] They're rare and fleeting, but when they come, it's like you can't miss. You know where everything is.

[72] I'd be willing to bet you're in that state some huge percentage of time when you're doing comedy because once you read about it there's a whole bunch of confidence that how it affects your inhibitions and your unwillingness to use inhibitions you're probably in that state almost always when you're hitting it in comedy yeah I would think so because when you're doing comedy I've always described it as you're more like a passenger than you are like the pilot you're all just you're just kind of like doing it and like sometimes words will come out of your mouth and you're like I don't even know if I could take credit for those words because I guess it's not I know it's me it's coming out of my mouth I know it's my voice I know I know technically I created them I wrote them but it's not really me that's doing it it's like it's just coming out on its own and and a guy who catches an enormous killer wave will say exactly the same thing and a guy who walks a tight rope over top of Niagara Falls will say the same thing you're going into that state in that time yeah I would imagine and in jujitsu you see it as well like when guys are rolling there's moments where you know like there's a certain transition like someone will hit the over under the guy will try to escape a flow immediately to an arm bar and then immediately to a triangle and it's all happening so fast it's almost impossible for that person to be thinking yeah they're just reacting and hitting those moves and just completely like in that zone one of the aspects of flow state is that you you interpret time differently so you'll hear that from a lot of fighters.

[73] I mean, one of the things I think that helps me analyze stuff is that when I fought, I had success and I had terrible failures, like terrible, embarrassing, changing who you are as a man failures.

[74] How many times do you fight?

[75] Nine.

[76] Yeah.

[77] And the, I won four of them.

[78] I'm going to do one last fight.

[79] I'm going to end five wins and five losses.

[80] How old are you now?

[81] Uh, 45.

[82] Five wins and five losses.

[83] You're sure.

[84] I'm sure.

[85] Hey, man, to get to 10, I mean, But I'm telling you, I had the kind of losses that make you question who you are as a man. You know what I mean?

[86] For days or weeks or effect, you're popping your head.

[87] Experiencing that, I think that's an analyst's life.

[88] Like, I've had a flow state.

[89] My last fight, I went in the second round.

[90] I literally completely did whatever I wanted for seven minutes.

[91] It was perfect.

[92] And two fights earlier, my brain almost melted down.

[93] When I look back, I don't know if I lost vision or if I faced.

[94] Or what like just absolute utter failure and it hurt and it hurts you because in our genes The when males would fight if one of them would lose you'd be kicked out of the out of the The group like you may never have sex again you may never a one loss of a fight with another male Could change your history for the rest of your life that's in our genes only X generations ago and we still feel that But failure is really fucking brutal But it makes you look at these things differently.

[95] Like now when I look at these elite -level fighters who can do that every day, I have such a marvel in what they're capable of, and I think that's because I got brutally embarrassed in fight before.

[96] And I think, and you sure don't like that experience, but it changes who you are and hopefully in good ways later on.

[97] Well, also, when you lose, whenever you fail at something and you feel that awful feeling of failure, the motivation that comes from that to never feel that again is almost impossible to recreate without having experienced failure.

[98] You find it in comedy, I experienced it in fighting as well, like those moments where when it's over, you just feel like such a hunk of shit that when you're training from then on, your intensity is so much higher because the stakes are higher because you know that a brutal beatdown by somebody is such a horrible proposition, not just in the moment, but after that moment.

[99] The thinking about the act, the thinking about it, the same as failing.

[100] Like, I think failure as a person, and especially as a man, I think it's a huge part of life.

[101] I think it's an important part of life.

[102] And it's the people that stay on the couch and don't risk anything, that you're, that's trying to stay comfortable is one of the worst decisions you could ever make as a man. Trying to stay comfortable is a terrible, terrible path.

[103] Yeah.

[104] Because you're just going to stay soft and weak and you're never going to figure out anything.

[105] You're never going to accomplish shit.

[106] I've got to do some pretty fun things.

[107] I have a really good life.

[108] I like everything that I do.

[109] And I got a killer wife and I live in Canada, I have fun and stuff.

[110] And I really think the only two things that I ever had going for me was that I have a crazy good work ethic and I'm not afraid to look like an idiot.

[111] I don't give a fuck.

[112] I am not afraid to look like an idiot.

[113] Failure sucks and it hurts you.

[114] But be not afraid to be made fun of or put down or looked at and laughed at and not give a shit about that.

[115] you'll try stuff you know you'll go for things like you'll do stuff and uh i mean man nobody ever had more haters than a guy who wore eye makeup and tried to go into the fight game like i mean fucking everybody hated me everybody in canada like anybody in the fight business and here i am fucking six years later all you can do is put your head down and try to do good work you can't do anything else nothing you can't kiss anybody's ass i was talking to eddie about this too you can't kiss anybody's ass you can't beg your way out of it you can't buy your way out of it if they hate you and they think you're a joke, the only answer is to just do try to do great work.

[116] There's no other cure.

[117] And that's what I tried to do.

[118] Yeah, I think in that sense, sometimes it's good to have haters because it keeps you motivated.

[119] It keeps you motivated and it also, it's a balancing act.

[120] You know, I think the world needs yin and yang.

[121] The world needs push and pull.

[122] And I think that having some negativity in your life, it makes the positivity feel so much better.

[123] Yeah.

[124] Yeah.

[125] No, it makes it makes a lot of sense, man. I mean, we were just talking about losing.

[126] What, what, you know, there is that evolutionary reason and that like deep in us that, oh my God, I am never, I'm going to be made pushed out of the group and never have sex again.

[127] I'm going to wander the earth alone for the rest of my life.

[128] That's in us.

[129] But I think also, you know, I forget where I was going with it.

[130] He's not even stone, ladies and gentlemen.

[131] I had an edible this morning, actually.

[132] Uh -oh.

[133] But, yeah, I mean, it's just.

[134] one of those things it's a miserable miserable thing but i know where i was going winning is so good because losing so terrible you know like i mean if losing didn't suck winning would be oh cool let's go try and win again next weekend i remember when i was competing the day of the competition there was always moments where i was like i gotta stop doing this like this is just too much stress this just feels terrible this is just and then once i would win i would go this is the greatest feeling the world has ever known like people who i feel sorry for people who don't know what this feels like to just to win like a major taekwondo tournament or something like that it was just the craziest feeling like you just felt like wow all that work paid off and that fuels you as a person to accomplish other things it gives you this this understanding of focus and of motivation and discipline and then if you apply all those things to anything to writing to whatever you're trying to do to building a business to whatever you're trying to do you can accomplish things that you felt were insurmountable before.

[135] For sure.

[136] I mean, there was, the opposite of that, too, is in us, I think we all think if the zombie apocalypse happens tomorrow, I'll be the guy, rolls the car off, my wife picks her up, runs out of here, kills ten zombies on the way, gets on the helicopter, and gets out of there.

[137] But that's not entirely always true.

[138] And you need to find that out about yourself.

[139] Right.

[140] You need to, yeah, you need to face the fire to understand what it's like to be under extreme pressure.

[141] Yeah.

[142] And losing makes you say, I'm not necessarily that guy who fucking flips the car, does that, jumps, kills 10 zombies.

[143] But then if you can come back and win, you go, you know what, if I'm at my best, if I'm focused, if I have my shit together, some of the time I can be that guy.

[144] And I think that's what you kind of hope for.

[145] Well, it's also objective analysis of your own shortcomings and your own strengths.

[146] And that comes in martial arts.

[147] It's a huge factor in martial arts because when, especially when you're training, when you're in the gym and you're sparring with, you know, if you've got a great gym, like you're training a 10th Planet Jiu -Jitsu or something like that, you got just a whole room -filled killers.

[148] And everyone kind of knows the food chain.

[149] Everyone knows where everybody stands.

[150] And why does everyone know where everybody stands?

[151] We know where everybody stands because we're tapping each other out on a regular basis.

[152] And so because of that, you're forced to really analyze your game.

[153] Like, this motherfucker gets me in his guard.

[154] I'm in trouble.

[155] Like I got to stay out of this guy's guard I know this Why?

[156] Because I've been caught I understand it Whereas if you don't have any experience Overcoming adversity You're like Nobody's catching me And then you get in there With somebody who just rag dolls you And you like What the fuck And like your ideas of who you are Change Because you have this distorted Like how many guys out there That have never fought Have this crazy distorted Perception of what they're capable of Insane Like nobody looks at Tiger Woods And goes On the right day I'm beating that guy 18 18 holes Bro you don't know how I play golf.

[157] If I played golf, I would dominate.

[158] Because I'm taking it to the streets.

[159] It's going to be fucking street golf, you know?

[160] Like, guys really think that, but that's a lack of understanding of what that really is.

[161] I mean, you can kind of see the willingness or the ability to go, there's trouble, I'm going to hit it with this fist.

[162] That's in every guy.

[163] So they don't understand that other guys have an understanding of physics and understanding of where the body works.

[164] What happens when you hit somebody in the throat?

[165] What the natural instinct to roll away gives them your back.

[166] like all the most basics they don't even understand that exists right so they have the idea that if i hit that thing with this thing i might be able to beat it yeah they think that somehow another they're tougher somehow another they're more alpha or whatever whatever goofy shit they have in their head and it's just a prop it's like it's like a building that they use for a movie but there's nothing inside the house like you have this like this fake facade and then behind there there's no house where's your fucking house you know and some fucking beast you and starts pounded on you and you give you back and you're like and then after that's over you you're so devastated and defeated and who you your perceptions of who you were were so screwy yeah I can't tell you how many times I've had guys tell me that they would never lose if they fought because my mentality they're always like this yo bro I don't lose my mentality that's I've had a dozen why are they all why do they all have Italian accent because they're all Italian that's a huge part of my my culture the Italians I don't know what it is about my people, but they're goofy as fuck when it comes to that.

[167] They have this bizarre belief in their ability to fight.

[168] That's awesome.

[169] I don't know what it is.

[170] It's wrong most of the time.

[171] You know, even if it's wrong, like you see dudes do terrible things, treat people bad, be assholes.

[172] If that guy took a beating when he was 15, he'd be a better person.

[173] You're right.

[174] He would be a way better guy today.

[175] He would treat people better.

[176] He'd under but, you know, there's not enough of that going on.

[177] We're really soft.

[178] Like our culture is really so like by a fight network where I work there's like a metro where you get groceries and then we used to walk around this building it takes like four minutes and they built this path on the other side so it only takes two minutes now.

[179] It costs like 80, 100 ,000 to strip it out put this stuff down put what the fuck are we doing that for?

[180] Well you're in Canada though what part of Canada?

[181] Yeah Toronto gets cold as fucking Toronto two minutes I mean it's like we're going to literally spend money to make sure that people don't have to go do more effort for two minutes, even escalators.

[182] Like, why do we make this shit?

[183] Like, you know what I mean?

[184] We, in the history of humankind, there has never been a softer culture than North America.

[185] Canada.

[186] You have never in human history.

[187] True.

[188] You know?

[189] And that's, I think, another reason why fighting is so interesting because in a world like that, let's go see what happens when we see the opposite of that.

[190] When we see people who drive it to the hardest level, push it as far as they can humanly go and go in and get another guy.

[191] You're talking about a guy saying, oh, you know, I'm hard.

[192] That guy's fucking hard too.

[193] The guy you're fighting is also mentally, unbelievably talented.

[194] He's also, and he's better than you.

[195] Yeah, and he's training every day, and he's objective, and he's got a real balanced sense of who he is.

[196] He's a real martial artist.

[197] Yeah, that's a good point, that how soft we are is one of the reasons why it's so exciting to see someone compete in such a dangerous and volatile profession.

[198] But the critics of MMA would say, well, the reason why we are.

[199] are so quote unquote soft is that our race or the human race is evolving and that we are moving towards a state where we no longer require physical conflict.

[200] I think that martial arts is the key to that gap in the, and this would seem like contradictory to someone who doesn't engage in martial arts, but I think that the realities of the biology, the realities of the body itself and the long history of combat that's ingrained in our genetics, our DNA, has this long history of all these people before us that had to fight to stay alive, whether it's to fight off animals or fight off intruders or fight off.

[201] And all this conflict is almost built into the system.

[202] And one of the best ways, in my opinion, to ensure peace is to actually exercise out all of that conflict in the gym so that it doesn't exist in society.

[203] It doesn't exist in the workplace.

[204] And it doesn't exist in friendships.

[205] And it doesn't exist in, you know, in the world at large, it only exists in dojoes.

[206] It only exists in gyms.

[207] And some of the nicest, most respectful people I have ever met have been killers, murderers.

[208] I mean, in the gym, you know, in the cage, in boxing rings, kickboxers, the nicest folks.

[209] Because of the fact that they have no insecurities when it comes to that stuff, their focus when it comes to their martial arts It's not about, you know, like, it's not about going out and bullying people on the street or going out and picking fights.

[210] No, their focus is in bettering their skills.

[211] And in doing so and in training really hard, all your need to prove all that goes away.

[212] Like some, I've seen, like, MMA fighters that people don't know.

[213] And they get into discussions with people and someone will get douchey with them.

[214] And they'll smile and laugh.

[215] Like, there's a famous story.

[216] My friend Tate Fletcher fought on the Ultimate Fighter.

[217] He's a black belt and jujitsu.

[218] a bad motherfucker it's cool ass dude too super nice if you're a friendly guy tate's gonna be your best friend he's just the nicest guy ever but we were in the heart rock hotel and there was this big fucking kid man he was like six foot six maybe at least six four six five and tate's like six four so this guy was bigger than tate and uh like probably like a big just he's probably like college age 23 24 and he was just being a fucking drunk asshole to everybody and just walking around with his shirt off, this big giant kid, and he got to Tate's door, and he said to Tate, like, hey, man, that's my fucking room.

[219] And Tate's like, no, I'm pretty sure it's my room.

[220] It's like, I got my key right here, and I'm going to use the key.

[221] And Tate goes, take it easy, and Tate opens his door and goes inside.

[222] And I had the room next to Tate, so I go inside my room.

[223] And I hear bang, bang, bang, I hear banging on Tate's door.

[224] And we had our doors open, you know, the joining rooms.

[225] and I stepped through Tate's talking.

[226] What the fuck's going on?

[227] Is that that same guy?

[228] And so Tate opens the guy.

[229] He goes, don't you shut the door on me, bitch?

[230] It was like some crazy moment where this guy was like not just picking a fight, but going after Tate once he went into the room.

[231] They go out into the hallway.

[232] It's weird that people do that at all.

[233] It's just a big bully.

[234] Just a big bully who used to being a big bully.

[235] And Tate goes, what do you want to do, man?

[236] What do you want to do?

[237] He goes, I'm going to kick your.

[238] fucking ass.

[239] Tate goes, why don't you come over here and swing on me, man?

[240] Come on.

[241] Come on.

[242] So Tate is standing in front of the dude, and the dude is like, oh shit, this is really happening.

[243] And then Tate throws an inside leg kick and then pulls guard, grabs the guy, pulls guard before the guy even knows it.

[244] Tate hooks an Oma Plata, is on the side of the guy, and then security shows up.

[245] So he's got this guy in an Oma Plata.

[246] He's got his arm under his neck in an Oma Plata and security shows up and they go stop stop stop so i go don't worry about it man i go it's fine he's just going to put him to sleep it's okay and the and the security guy goes hey you're that guy from fear factor and in that moment in that moment where the security guys are completely going holy shit what are you doing here man i go this drunk guy's picking on my friend and when when i said like don't worry he's just going to put him to sleep tate said that in his head he was like all right i guess i'm going to put him to sleep now so he wasn't going to hit the guy he just decided like if i hit this guy, then it becomes this crazy assault and there's marks on him.

[247] So Tate just chokes, it puts a rear naked choke on him and sleeps them right there in the hallway.

[248] His friends picked the guy up, and it's like a scene in a goddamn movie.

[249] His friends picked the guy up.

[250] They put him in the hotel, the elevator, the elevator door closes, and the guy vanishes.

[251] And he disappears from life.

[252] And that is the end.

[253] And it just laughs all night about it.

[254] For years.

[255] We still bring this up.

[256] That shit happened to like 2003.

[257] We still bring this up because it was so ridiculous.

[258] You've seen Ryan, what's his name, that Jiu -Jitsu guy in a bar, and he takes the guy down, takes his bat, or mounts him?

[259] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Ryan Hall, Ryan Hall, yeah.

[260] Same deal.

[261] It was like in a restaurant or something, right?

[262] Calm is all hell, don't worry about it, don't worry about it.

[263] Get some down, Mounts him waits until he's exhausted.

[264] Yeah.

[265] Well, he's used to doing that all the time.

[266] That's the thing about training is like you're used to struggling like essentially for your life.

[267] Yeah.

[268] I mean, what is it tap?

[269] You know, tap is a way that you can train.

[270] where it's safe and someone taps and what that means is you know you got me but what what has got me means means you're dead I would have died or my arm would have broken in half and then you killed me then you kill them yeah it's it's essentially you're playing a game called I kill you with my body or you kill me or we kill each other several times over the course of a seven minute rolling session and then we shake hands thanks man that was great and then you move on to the next guy who's gonna kill you out into the world and walk out in the world and be a better person I agree 100 % it exercises that stuff out of your system.

[271] And that's the frustrating thing when all of a sudden, you know, I come to town and my wife's here and her friends are like, what's the deal with this war machine and Christy Mack?

[272] They don't know about any of this stuff.

[273] They don't know about any of the good things about martial arts.

[274] They don't know about any of the good things that doesn't make people a better person.

[275] They just come in and they're like, hey, some, some MMA fighter beat up a porn star.

[276] Like, you know what I mean?

[277] They don't know.

[278] Like, they don't know that there's that side to it.

[279] That martial arts makes your life better.

[280] Fucked up story.

[281] I don't, you know, I don't know what exactly went down.

[282] Like, people keep asking me to comment on it.

[283] This is the only thing I would ever say.

[284] Any time, you know, there's an altercation like that between a man and a woman and a man hits a woman.

[285] It's, it's never correct.

[286] It's always evil.

[287] It's always wrong.

[288] It's beyond fucked that a guy could beat a woman.

[289] It's beyond fucked.

[290] And it should be, it should be a heinous crime that's punishable.

[291] in the worst way as possible.

[292] But I don't know what happened.

[293] You know, all I know is it appears, according to her story, that he beat the shit out of her.

[294] That's what it looks like.

[295] There's no evidence to the contrary.

[296] And that's awful.

[297] So that's all I could say.

[298] I mean, I'm not commenting on it until, I mean, really commenting on until I know more of what exactly happened.

[299] I don't know what the fuck went down, but I don't know how a guy could do that.

[300] I literally do not know.

[301] how a man, especially a martial artist.

[302] He always likes to think of himself as not a martial artist, he's a fighter, you know?

[303] Yeah, and that's probably true.

[304] He's an animal, you know?

[305] And there are those guys.

[306] Typically in the gym, you don't get guys get that good that are animals like that.

[307] They don't have enough, they have too much ego to go, I'm not good at this, so I have to train that to get better.

[308] So these guys come into, you know, a big gym and they're new and they're tough guys, they're gone in a year.

[309] They don't have, they won't have the absence of ego enough to train the things they're not good at and then they end up leaving.

[310] So it's rare that somebody has to be very driven of like an animal style fighter type to get past that, to get to that level, or just be genetically really superior, you know, or whatever.

[311] It's rare that that style of person becomes a high -level MMA fighter.

[312] Yeah, it is rare because if you're that fucked in the head, usually you're not strong enough mentally to keep going and to get to that.

[313] So, like, war machine's a, he's a high -level MMA fighter.

[314] Yeah.

[315] You know, I mean, it's just so disappointed.

[316] I had him in the podcast to, was six months ago, maybe something like that.

[317] Yeah, it's a weird thing.

[318] It's unbelievably sad.

[319] But, like you said, we don't really know.

[320] And his life's over.

[321] His fucking life is over.

[322] I mean, I don't know what he's going to do because he's been in jail twice now.

[323] And this is the third one, and a girl, a pretty little girl like that.

[324] She's tiny, man. She's a hundred pounds.

[325] Yeah, you don't like to speculate on how this will end.

[326] That's changed the subject.

[327] It is a different one, too, you know, not just this topic, but it's strange.

[328] Like, I like to analyze fighting.

[329] I don't really like to be an MMA journalist.

[330] Because a lot of that time, you're not talking about fighting.

[331] Guys are talking about this guy said that thing, or this sold that many things, or, you know, why is this guy not a star?

[332] I don't care really about that shit so much.

[333] Like, to me, I'm just so unbelievably curious of what is going to happen when Demetrius Johnson fights this guy.

[334] And then after he fights that guy, sitting there and trying to figure out what the thing was that made that one moment like that.

[335] Do you know Jaron Vellel?

[336] Yes.

[337] Jaron Vellel was reffing that match.

[338] We talk about bad refs, we talk about bad judges.

[339] Jaron's cool, and I ran it to him in Winnipeg.

[340] Actually, Joe Dirkson was out this party, and you were talking about guys that kind of, you know, are cool.

[341] Dersen works now in a prison, and he said guys will be like, I think I could beat you, and he'll be like, yeah, he probably could.

[342] Joe doesn't give a shit.

[343] But, yeah, Jaron Vell is there, and he's saying, oh, I really like your Demetrius Johnson break.

[344] I'm like, thanks, man. Whenever anybody likes those, it means a lot.

[345] me because I love doing them right and so we're talking about it goes well you know tell me what else you saw and where I'm having a beer and whatever and uh I said why and he goes well I was I was reffing that one so I did I looked at a lot of tape too and I'm like really that's cool man he goes yeah me and big John him and John are very good friends they'll go on Skype and look at tape together and something like wow that's cool that's fucking cool that you do that and he goes yeah I saw a couple things oh one thing you didn't he didn't say you missed but he suggested and it was Fucking brilliant.

[346] Like this referee that was refing the main event picked up on this one that basically when the two guys, when Demetrius Johnson ends up kind of in that center zone not quite in the clinch and not quite at, you know, in the pocket, kind of in that middle zone, he'll give you a little shove.

[347] To put you in a position.

[348] Yeah.

[349] Well, he is looking for one of your only two logical responses.

[350] You're going to back up and he backs all the way out or you're going to push against his and he goes to the clinch.

[351] so he goes in as a little sample test and he does it all after jaron pointed it out i'm like holy fuck i looked at his fights he always does that and for a referee to go and spend that much time and find that little moment because and i said why did you do that because well i just wanted to be in the right moment right places and be aware of what was going on i'm like that's a fucking good that's a great referee that's what we need yeah that is what we need and that's an excellent example in demetre's Johnson of a guy who's trained by one of the best in the world in Matt Hume.

[352] I did a breakdown of Matt Hume's first fight in pancreas.

[353] Oh, yeah.

[354] I'm a big Matt Hume fan.

[355] I really like him in the corner, too.

[356] He's great at giving technical instructions in between rounds.

[357] I think, you know, there's a few guys that are just really good trainers and you just see it in the examples of the fight.

[358] Dwayne Ludwig, I think right now is the best.

[359] I don't think there's a better striking coach on Earth.

[360] Duke is right up there with him.

[361] Right up there with them.

[362] Duke and Henry Hooft are in this world of perfection, and Bang Ludwig is pushing the boundaries a little.

[363] He's trying to test, he's taking new things, even just the simplest shit that he was showing me after, was it after or before TJ's fight, I think it was before.

[364] And he was showing me the elements of when guys will go to enter.

[365] And you know how, like, I'll use punches to get you to think up and down and you start responding up and down?

[366] He makes you believe that he is playing with your, You're up and down.

[367] And while your brain is focusing in on that, he camouflages his footwork in.

[368] So some of the punches are bullshit to make you think about them while he steps off in a different place.

[369] Yeah.

[370] shit like that.

[371] And he's, oh, man. And he is operating like, he's got 700 cups of coffee and I mean, he's yelling and he's thinking fast.

[372] And you can see, talk about flow.

[373] when he's teaching, this guy's in a different place.

[374] Yeah, he really is.

[375] Dwayne Ludwig chugs alpha brain.

[376] He eats that shit like candy.

[377] He eats it all day long.

[378] He's obsessed with, he's obsessed with analyzing fights and training fighters.

[379] It's such a huge part of his daily thought process.

[380] It's, it just, it's engrossing.

[381] It's his whole being.

[382] And that's why he's so goddamn good.

[383] I sat down with him at lunch the day T .J. fought Barrow.

[384] and when T .J. Dilleshaw beat Hennon Barow, who at the time was thought of as the best pound for pound fight or one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world, T .J. was a big underdog, and T .J. went into that fight and dominated Hennon Burrow, knocked him out in the fifth round after dropping him in the first, dominating him for five rounds and then stopped him.

[385] But what was crazy was when I had lunch with Dway, Dwayne told me exactly what the plan was.

[386] And then he went out and did it exactly that way.

[387] A lot of switching stances, a lot of capitalizing.

[388] on Barrow loading up and standing flat -footed, a lot of stepping to the outside, then immediately countering, and he did it over and over and over again.

[389] And TJ's a sponge, man. I had a chance to watch those two work out together.

[390] And TJ is just a sponge.

[391] He's a sponge.

[392] Everything Duane teaches him.

[393] Yeah.

[394] Sometimes it's, like, you got the brilliant teacher and the brilliant fighter, and then the two together make an even bigger thing.

[395] And there's no conflict between those guys.

[396] They're really good friends, and TJ's a completely open book.

[397] His cup is empty, and Dwayne is a big is completely ego -free when it comes to teaching him.

[398] He's all about getting T .J. better.

[399] T .J. is all about getting better.

[400] And they're great friends.

[401] These guys love each other.

[402] So they're always laughing and joking and paling around together.

[403] Like when T .J. beat Hennon Barrow, and there was this moment after the fight where they hugged and they're both crying.

[404] It was real.

[405] Woo.

[406] Fucking real, man. I was tearing up when I was watching it.

[407] Cajside.

[408] It was crazy.

[409] Yeah, it was incredible.

[410] It really was.

[411] And Demetrius and Matt Hume, similar thing.

[412] I looked back.

[413] It was 1994.

[414] It was like four months after UFC won.

[415] And I went back and re -analyzed because we up at Fight Network we're calling classic pancreas.

[416] So we got all the old pancreas and we're commentating them through the lens of today.

[417] So we're going, you know, this guy does this.

[418] Wow, you know, in 2014, that couldn't happen because of this, this and this.

[419] So we're looking at him historically in the context of today.

[420] It's super cool, man. It's the funnest thing.

[421] Like, guys, don't, there's no such thing as, like, if a guy wants to pass your guard, he just passes it like in the 90s everyone's good of footlocks for some reason people change position you get a mount and you'll like swing your leg over the top to go back to side so I'm in the mount my leg over to end up inside you'll be in eight 10 different positions always kind of they were chaining together submission attempts and positions to try to make you keep guessing but it didn't like it had overstayed its welcome you're looking at it and going this doesn't work but they're still doing it yeah well it's fascinating dog shit jiu jiu jitsu is what it is I watched Coliseum 2000 with Hicks and Gracie over his house.

[422] Like way back in, I kind of say, it was probably like 2004 or 2005 or something like that.

[423] It was back when Hickson was still thinking about fighting.

[424] And it was a few years after he had fought Funaki in Coliseum.

[425] And we were watching fights together.

[426] We watched the entire event.

[427] And Hickson would break down the movements.

[428] And he's like, look at all this space.

[429] You can't have this space.

[430] You know, like space to him was just evil.

[431] Like, what is this?

[432] You know, because Hickson's Jiu -Jitsu has always been the elite of the elite.

[433] So when he watches, like, these errors and these things like big goofy movements, you know, with big openings, he would just drive him crazy.

[434] Like, he would just be talking about all these errors and what's wrong with this and so focused on it.

[435] And if you watch Jiu -Jitsu or you watch MMA from 93 and then watch, like, say, Demetrius Johnson in 2014, you're like, boy, this is like, No sport has evolved as quickly.

[436] And those two examples, it's when I looked at Matt Hume, he was better than everybody.

[437] Him and Evan Tanner were better than everybody just because they were fighting like today.

[438] And you look back, Matt Hume was doing this kind of leg ride and side ride like wrestling position that Chris Wyatman was teaching at a seminar I was at like two years ago.

[439] He was doing it in 1994.

[440] Well, he had good Moy Thai, too.

[441] Matt Hume had very good Moytai.

[442] Yeah.

[443] Remember he fought Pat Militich and broke his nose and they stopped the fight.

[444] That was crazy.

[445] Like stop the fight for a broken nose.

[446] I know.

[447] I remember like thinking like, what kind of goofy shit is that?

[448] You look back at these pancreas ones too and it's like there were rope escapes.

[449] Like if you go and you grab a rope, it's like you've got it.

[450] Instead of tapping, I grabbed the rope.

[451] And then we're stood up.

[452] And it's like if it is not finished, you win because I grabbed the rope once.

[453] But we tried to figure that.

[454] I was going to talk to Dave Meltzer, right?

[455] Who I don't really know good.

[456] But, you know, we've chatted online and stuff because he understands that history moment because there's also a lot of works back then, like legitimately.

[457] And you have to.

[458] When you say works, for folks who don't know what we're talking about, we mean fix fights.

[459] And that's, a lot of that has a history because of pro wrestling.

[460] Pro wrestling in Japan was huge.

[461] And that's also where the rope escape came from.

[462] Yeah.

[463] That was always a big thing in pro wrestling.

[464] A guy would have a hold on a guy, the guy would grab the rope and the referee would make them break.

[465] It was a way to keep pro wrestling interesting.

[466] Well, when we look back at it, We suddenly, Ram Dean and I are calling these, and we look at each other, fuck, that's, that's fake.

[467] And the first time that happened, we were like, well, like, I mean, we have to address that.

[468] Like, your credibility demands that you don't go, oh, and he power bombed them.

[469] I mean, you can't do that.

[470] And you're talking about history.

[471] We're trying to make this series a history lesson as well, right?

[472] So you have to talk about it.

[473] So the reason it looks the way it looks.

[474] You nailed it.

[475] It's like basically wrestling was fake.

[476] Once point of time wrestling was real.

[477] The guys went to towns and they wrestled each other And the winner was the winner who could wrestle But guys got so good and it got so boring That they had to fix them And became pro wrestling Is that why they did it?

[478] Is it because guys got so good Or is it just because people wanted to control the outcomes I think a bit of both I bet it was more gambling than anything Maybe so, maybe so yeah And then Pro wrestling over there These two guys, Funaki and Suzuki Went and said We're going to take pro wrestling Which we love and everyone loves We're going to make it real And so when they made it real that was pancreas.

[479] So suddenly it's like wrestling was real, then it was fake, and now we're going to make it real again.

[480] So there were things like rope escapes left in there as you as you transferred from fake to real again, they stayed there for a bit.

[481] Yeah, that's interesting.

[482] That's really interesting.

[483] And they were so obsessed with the storylines because they were originally wrestling performers that most of the works involved them and involved them losing.

[484] So in its own way, it was only there to create entertainment, but it's a weird time in there, Like for purists and I fucking love the sport, you have to make sense of why that was for people so that they're not just, it doesn't color MMA in a way.

[485] Right.

[486] But it was that moment where MMA and wrestling sort of touched each other in the early 90s.

[487] Yeah, that is an interesting thing, man. It's also an interesting thing that I, we were saying this, that I don't think there's ever been a sport that has changed so much and grown so much in just a period of 20 years.

[488] Like, this 20, if you go to UFC 1 and then go to, what I don't know, what number we don't know, like 180, 78, 78, 77.

[489] If you go and just go to 2014, 2003 to 2014, it's gone through like a thousand years of evolution.

[490] The level is so different.

[491] The level of athleticism, the level of endurance, the martial arts skill, like everything's different.

[492] Everything's different.

[493] I think it's one of the things I love about it the most.

[494] And, like, people will talk John Jones and Cormier are, like, having all this heat.

[495] And they ask me about it.

[496] It's like, I don't care.

[497] It's interesting.

[498] But for me, the biggest thing about one of the, I always say the biggest thing, because I also love the science.

[499] I also love the brain chemistry.

[500] I love the beauty of the dance, all of it.

[501] But one of the things I'm most interested in is it's basically one global science experiment in real time using thousands and thousands and thousands of fights to distill down to the nugget of, what's the best and it still is that every 500 fights the best coaches are going okay well that doesn't work anymore well we've added that that works and it's this ongoing distillation down to the purest way to beat other guys that changes slightly now because of this sort of demand for entertainment from the audience and stuff that changes like you know guys are rewarded more for standing now and certain things so that alters it but you take that out of it and basically we just have thousands and thousands of contests all there to help us determine the research of how to be the best fighter ever.

[502] Yeah, I have issue with that aspect of it, where the technical aspect of fights changes for it to be more entertaining.

[503] I think it's not good.

[504] I think it's not smart, and I think it takes away from the purity of mixed martial arts expression.

[505] Like, what is martial arts?

[506] It's all about doing the very best thing in order to win a fight.

[507] And if you put yourself more in danger so that the crowd roars and, you know, like, just drop her hands, duke it out.

[508] I remember a guy who's a friend of mine wrote something on Twitter, and he wrote, you know, fuck technical, striking, you know, just stand in the center of the cage and let it bang.

[509] And meanwhile, the guy who wrote that is all fucked up now.

[510] He's got all sorts of physical problems.

[511] He's had a bunch of fights.

[512] He's all banged up.

[513] It's like, no, don't think that.

[514] Don't say that.

[515] Like, put, that's the, that is like, you know, like, you know, fuck thinking.

[516] I'm just going to hit this with a hammer.

[517] No, no. You have to think.

[518] That's the whole thing.

[519] The whole thing is solving the puzzle.

[520] And solving the puzzle in striking is about technical striking.

[521] It doesn't mean no knockouts.

[522] There's a lot of knockouts that come from tactical strikers.

[523] It means doing it the right way where you have the most amount of success, the least amount of risk, and you're doing things based on the amount of knowledge that's been accumulated over thousands of years of martial arts.

[524] You're applying that in an intelligent way.

[525] Demetri's Johnson, in my opinion, is the best example of that.

[526] That fucking guy does everything right.

[527] Everything he does is perfect.

[528] He doesn't rush anything.

[529] You never see him slugging it out and fucking drop at his hands and like, come on, bitch, come on.

[530] There's none of that stupidity.

[531] It's all brilliant martial arts.

[532] And he's so exciting to watch.

[533] I mean, you know, sometimes people say it's not as exciting because he's not finishing guys as much.

[534] But he fucking finished John Maraga in the fourth round of a fight that he was dominating.

[535] He finished Joseph Benavides with one punch.

[536] The second best guy in the world in his weight.

[537] Exactly.

[538] You know?

[539] He's a beast.

[540] And Bagotino, the only reason why he didn't finish him because he's EPOed to the fucking gills.

[541] Yeah.

[542] And who knows what else.

[543] They didn't fatigue.

[544] Yeah.

[545] I didn't fatigue.

[546] Fatigue is such a part of it.

[547] Like, it's such an enormous part of it.

[548] If you are, you know, if everything else is equal, but you're in better shape than the guy, eventually it's no longer equal.

[549] Yes.

[550] It's really that simple.

[551] Well, that's the Nick Diaz strategy.

[552] Nick Diaz strategy.

[553] Nick is obviously a very high -level martial artist when it comes to his technique and his experience and he's obviously a very, very tough guy but he's also in fucking phenomenal shape.

[554] Nick Diaz is swam back from Alcatraz twice in the fucking Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco filled with sharks.

[555] He swam back twice.

[556] He's done triathletes.

[557] He's triathlons.

[558] He's done marathons.

[559] I mean, he's a fucking beast when it comes to his physical conditioning.

[560] And what he does is just puts a pace He just makes you run with him Like, come on, let's go, we're going running We're going running And he starts throwing these punches That are like 50 % speed And hey, come and catch me, come and get you pulled in there He's good at that too Oh yeah, he starts, come on bitch, come on bitch That gets you riled Oh, it's brilliant You know Jack Slack?

[561] Sure, yeah, yeah Oh man, that guy's doing killer stuff Excellent stuff, yeah, great breakdowns There's a little group of people out there It's a niche in a niche.

[562] I'm proud to be part of it.

[563] I stand there and do mine, but Jack is fucking good.

[564] And there's this young guy, Lawrence Kenshin, is really good.

[565] Yeah, so I was going to mention him.

[566] I'm glad you did.

[567] Yes, he's excellent.

[568] He's has great breakdowns.

[569] And I'm so happy that, like, there's these guys doing it.

[570] And instead of going, who's that fucking guy?

[571] I'm better than him.

[572] Good for you.

[573] We end up kind of we're friends and we're kind of like pushing each other.

[574] That's really cool.

[575] Well, that's an interesting thing about MMA commentary that's like that as well.

[576] Like, I'm really good friends at Michael Schiavello, really good friends with Jimmy Smith.

[577] I worked with Michael.

[578] Twice.

[579] Good friends of Jason Chambers as well.

[580] He's a great buddy.

[581] And because I'm friends with all these guys that also do my job, like, there's no like competition amongst each other.

[582] Like I try to get Jimmy Smith hired by the UFC.

[583] When Jimmy Smith was, his contract was going up with Bellator, I called Dana White and I said, dude, this guy's the best.

[584] He's fucking good, man. He's great.

[585] He's a real martial artist.

[586] He's a real good guy.

[587] I go, he should work for us.

[588] You know, he's fucking great.

[589] But Bellator must have understood he was so valuable.

[590] Well, they would, yeah, they were, well, they were worried.

[591] also they would worry that who the fuck else is out there I mean it's a really tough gig to have a person who's very passionate and very articulate which Jimmy is both and is really good at breaking down scenarios and situations and is legitimately passionate while the fight's going on like you could see it and also not afraid to call out bad refereeing bad calls bad judgments and he's really like it's very important to him to be honest about the whole scene there's not that many guys out there So if Bellator did lose Jimmy, like, who the fuck else?

[592] Who do they get?

[593] You know, he does all their fights.

[594] Yeah, they probably would call you.

[595] And you would do a great job, I'm sure.

[596] I mean, Brian Stan does a great job.

[597] Kenny Florin, of course, does a great job.

[598] Kenny, man, the guy, he's always been one of my favorites because he's a regular guy who just figured out how to get the answers to the shit he needed to get to.

[599] You know what I mean?

[600] Like, he wasn't some big, powerful genetic specimen.

[601] He was kind of a nerd who's like, if I can just figure out how to do this, okay, that worked, but this didn't.

[602] And overtime, and he analyzes the same way.

[603] But where I was going with Jack, talking about Jack, is he did this.

[604] I'm sure it's him, I'm remembering this amazing breakdown on Nick Diaz.

[605] Yes.

[606] And I'm pretty sure it was Jack.

[607] If it wasn't, if it was a different guy, I apologize.

[608] But it's looking at Nick Diaz is striking compared to old school bare -knuckle boxers.

[609] You know, the guys with the moustaches fighting like this.

[610] And it looks at it, and there's so many comparisons.

[611] Wade on the front leg, catching punches with the top of his head.

[612] And, like, so many, it's so brilliant.

[613] And I'm pretty, it must be Jack, because Jack's the best guy out there.

[614] Yeah, he's done a bunch of great stuff.

[615] He even wrote, uh, he wrote a whole piece on George St. Pierre versus Nick Diaz, which is a...

[616] In advance of it or after?

[617] I believe it was in advance.

[618] And he wrote a breakdown afterwards.

[619] He writes a bunch of those things, man. He's got...

[620] He's writing, part of the reason he's so good is he's working so much.

[621] He's in that zone, you know?

[622] Yeah.

[623] But nobody knows who he really is.

[624] Does anybody know what he looks like?

[625] No, I think he doesn't want that And I think that's super cool I think he's British I'm pretty sure he's British Yeah, I believe he is too But it's cool, man It's a little niche But people are finding it interesting And I always feel like You know, you look at other sports And on Monday The ESPN will have a two -hour show And they will go into what happened And it won't be like Well, this guy threw a thing And the highlight will only be the catch They'll show what happened At the line, they'll show They'll talk about what kind of plays these guys called and stuff that kind of analysis like all you guys do a fucking killer job but the before and the after and stuff that's an area I always wish the UFC concentrated on more especially during the really passion years like the the heavy work has always been on the hype and the excitement and this guy hates and these two are the best and stuff but during that era you feel like if you got 20 % or 30 % or 40 % of the audience to be obsessed with the technique and I think a lot of times people went and showed how to do a triangle, not how to watch a triangle.

[626] Right.

[627] You know what I mean?

[628] I see what you're saying.

[629] But it feels like in a lot of other sports, there are, they have spent time to develop a certain percentage of the audience that is there because baseball does some crazy shit.

[630] I don't know what happens in baseball, but there are guys that talk about how the field moves and what guys do when they're like with rosin and shit.

[631] And in football, they talk about how the plays are called, what the subtleties are.

[632] And you don't see that before and after.

[633] in the UFC.

[634] Right, and yeah, I agree with you.

[635] You know, it would be nice to see that.

[636] They're doing a lot of that, though, on the breakdowns that they do on Fox, on Fox Sports.

[637] You know, like Carlos Condit does a fantastic job of that.

[638] I haven't seen his.

[639] No, I'm sorry, did I say Carlos Condit?

[640] I didn't mean Carlos Condit.

[641] Who the fuck did that?

[642] But who does that?

[643] Dominic Cruz.

[644] Dominic Cruz does a great job of it.

[645] Speaking, like you're talking about Demetrius Johnson, Dominic Cruz, if he can come back the way that he was, he's one of those super brilliant, mind -blowing.

[646] performers too yeah well he's he's great as far as movement footwork and his conditioning is always top -notch too dominic is just so good at like not being there like you you you swing for him and he's off to the left and then he's countering you off to the right and you're like fuck him where is this guy but he does a great job like he did a great breakdown of kung lee versus rich franklin yeah explaining right hook i think he caused drew out the right hook yeah he did a great job of explaining Like, you know, when someone is like, like, heads straight up in the air and they don't move off the center line, that shit drives me crazy.

[647] I watched it.

[648] I was like, fucking, who's training you?

[649] Like, why you, like, what's going on here?

[650] And then you watch a guy like T .J. Dillishaw so satisfying because he does all the right things.

[651] Because he's constantly moving off the center line because he's completely unpredictable.

[652] So, like, when Dominic did a great, he did a great breakdown of what Franklin did wrong and where the errors were.

[653] And he's done that for a bunch of different fights.

[654] So Donag is really good at that.

[655] Yeah, he's fucking talented.

[656] When we're talking about Dwayne Ludwig, when he's teaching, he'll say, you make no errors unless you're making them on purpose.

[657] And what he means by that is if you obviously you show, well, this is here, the guy will throw a punch.

[658] We want him to do that and we'll respond.

[659] And there's a really wild, heavy case of it where you see.

[660] And I broke it down.

[661] And if you even just look at the fight itself, you see it as soon as somebody mentions it, was, Jacaray versus Okami, right?

[662] So Jacques -Arey, the whole fight, all he's got in mind is the overhand right.

[663] And the way for him to draw that out is, you know, how everybody, you know, when they talk about where the front foot goes, you know, against the Southpaw.

[664] He's got his front foot intentionally inside, and he's offering a straight line to his chin for the straight left.

[665] And Okami, you can see him seeing it and going, no, shit, he wants me to throw that.

[666] shit he's doing he's ready to counter it and the hesitation on okami is like it's such a fascinating moment as a guy's going look i'm out here you can hit me with it and he's going oh he's telling me i can hit him with it but he's got that right hand ready and that just those moments to me are the fascinating shit well it's also even more fascinating when it comes to a guy like jacqueray is because if you do engage the real fears that he's going to take you down so there's always this thing when you're striking with a guy who's such an elite grappler it's like this guy is trying to go me into a slug fest, but I know that he's going to change levels and take me down at any moment.

[667] So you're always hesitant to really commit to shots and extend yourself, because if you extend yourself, it makes it much more difficult to defend the takedown.

[668] A guy like Okami is also, or a guy like Jacques -Rae rather, is also fascinating because started out his career as one of the elite of the elite in grappling and really had bad striking in the beginning.

[669] Like you watch when he got knocked out by Makako, his striking was just very rudimentary, which just wasn't very good.

[670] But now he's destroying guys with...

[671] striking.

[672] He beat the fucking shit out of Yushin Okami with striking.

[673] And like, that's terrifying to people because now you take this guy who is this just phenomenal top 1 % of all grapplers ever.

[674] I mean, I think Jacques, like, out of elite jiu -jitsu guys, he's like top 1 % ever.

[675] And now destroying people with stand -up.

[676] It's like the focus that made him a great jiu -jitsu fighter and the athleticism is now making him an elite striker.

[677] And that's terrifying.

[678] that what I was always kind of an additional terrifying is that you don't see him for like a year when a guy's not around for a year you're like what the fuck is he doing right like what does he have now what new things does he have what does he do better what's way faster than it was a year ago that always scares the shit out of me like excites you and there's a fight coming but you're like shit man what has this guy been doing in the lab for the last year maybe he's got some crazy shit we don't even know about yeah well he's definitely getting better he's not slacking off I guarantee that but did you just see when he got elbow surgery and they cleaned out his elbow did you see that oh pull that up jami jacqueray elbow surgery pictures he had um before he fought francis garmont um he had uh like like really bad like bone spurs and chips and shit inside of his elbow it was like you know all the years of elbow and people and also of getting armed like things break off inside your elbow and it becomes comes like crunchy and you're moving it around.

[679] It's just all inflammation and tissue damage and look, we'll show it to you up on the big screen, but it's really fucking crazy.

[680] Like there's a cup of all the things that they remove from his elbow.

[681] He's got teeth in his elbow.

[682] It looks like teeth.

[683] Oh, that's disgusting.

[684] Chunks of bone and cartilage.

[685] And all ripping apart all the stuff around it all the time.

[686] You know, people don't, you know, how could they?

[687] But nobody really sees a guy.

[688] like who's a black belt level guy has been training you guys you and Eddie and shot these black belt level guys train all their life they have no idea what that does to their joints and their bodies like jujitsu's a fucking vicious sport like it's a hard vicious sport guys will kickboxers will look over at the jiu jitsu area and they see the guys stretching and stuff and I go look at these guys they won't they don't want no part of that they don't want to go in there have their skeleton all stacked by a guy like it's a vicious sport well it's a sport that I'm realizing like one of the things that I did I made some mistakes with my jujitsu training and one of the mistakes that I made was for a long time I didn't do any strength and conditioning equipment there's strengthening training I did mostly just jujitsu like for years and years I would lift ways like maybe once a week or something like that I get a little lift in just to kind of maintain my strength and size but I didn't specifically like strengthen my core strength in my spine strengthen certain areas hips and stretch constantly stretch you got to put as much time almost into that as you do into your jih Trey training just to armor up your body just to just to arm up your joints not so that you can overpower guys and like not concentrate on technique which a lot of people do have a problem with like really strong like football players big guys tend to try to muscle things instead like the really technical guys are always the really small guys because they don't have the muscle up option so their option is only to use the proper technique and leverage, but strengthening your body is important just to prevent injuries.

[689] Strengthening your hamstrings to prevent knee injuries, strengthening your quads, prevent knee injuries, strengthening your neck, strengthening your back, strengthening your back, strengthening lower back, stretching.

[690] All that's, like, a lot of guys slack off on that shit, and I did too, and I got some pretty serious back injuries because of that, because I wasn't strengthening those areas.

[691] You know, like, for the longest time, I very rarely worked my back.

[692] I didn't do like rows or any like exercises specifically.

[693] So having like an issue with discs and stuff like that forced me to really concentrate on that.

[694] Yeah, that's nasty stuff.

[695] Yeah.

[696] And then, you know, guys get back injuries and get, doctors give them like opiates and stuff.

[697] That shit can wreck their lives.

[698] Oh, for sure.

[699] A bad back injury leads to something like that.

[700] And next thing you know, you're, you're, you know, you're, yeah, you're philating dudes for money for hair.

[701] Hey, how'd you get there?

[702] It was a lot, a bit of a leap.

[703] I recognize.

[704] But what is your, what is your, what is your, martial arts background when did you start doing martial arts i started about nine taekwondo i have a black belt in taekwondo i trained through all in canada all in toronto yeah uh k s joe college i lived grew up in manitoba and you know what like my parents are the coolest people ever on earth i was just like a weird kid and i really was liked bruce lee and stuff like i was really interested in martial arts and i was pretty hyper and awed and it didn't have a lot of focus and they once they said if you're serious about this will do it they would drive me an hour and a off each direction to Winnipeg to go train three times a week for my whole, as a kid, It was amazing.

[705] You got great parents, man. Holy shit.

[706] It changed my whole life.

[707] And, you know, I competed.

[708] I did really well and stuff.

[709] And I enjoyed it.

[710] And I did a little box.

[711] I had interest in every martial art. So I did a little sycharon, which is like a Filipino martial arts.

[712] What's it called?

[713] Cicoron.

[714] How do you spell that?

[715] It's S -I -R -A -N.

[716] It's like Kali?

[717] No, Arniss and Kali are an offshoot of Sikoran.

[718] It's a Filipino martial art. And it's very much like Taekwondo, but when they compete, they stick their hands in their belt, and it's all spin kicks and hook kicks and shit.

[719] It's super cool.

[720] They put their hands in their belt.

[721] They compete, like, wide stance with their head far back, lots of hook kicks off the front.

[722] And then no hands.

[723] It's a kicking.

[724] It's like Savat almost.

[725] Wow.

[726] But Savat does have hands now.

[727] It's modified to have hands over time.

[728] But so I did a lot of that.

[729] No blocking either?

[730] No, all moving your head and your body.

[731] It was like really, it was just a very Winnipeg thing.

[732] this one central area of Canada this Filipino master of it came there and he started to school and he was a really good businessman so it ended up being on in the whole world if you looked at where Sikaran was taught the Philippines and there was a chunk a little red dot in the middle of Canada because this guy was there and he had a bunch of schools and people studied and a lot of Filipino population so I did a little of that and a bit of weight tie then yeah if Sycoran's really cool check it out I don't know how much there'll be of modern stuff on the internet but it's basically a ton of Round kicks, hook kicks, and spin kicks with your weight heavy on the back leg.

[733] So it's sort of like kicking, like a martial arts version of soccer.

[734] Yeah.

[735] You can't use your hands at all.

[736] Like fencing with your feet.

[737] Yeah, I mean, like you can't even like block.

[738] That's so ridiculous.

[739] Yeah, it's really weird.

[740] I mean, but is boxing ridiculous?

[741] You can only punch.

[742] Yeah, but at least you can block.

[743] Yeah.

[744] I guess that, well, actually you would see a lot of.

[745] Because over the, I always found it interesting, even just as a kid, I was curious.

[746] Guys would be doing, you'd go to the tournaments and guys are all.

[747] doing hook kicks and then shift forward and spin kick all of a sudden guys started doing this from there where they would just bounce on their back leg hooking and and round kicking so they bounced towards each other doing that so they're tapping it's just an interesting thing as a teenager to see and then I got I started playing in a rock band in my 20s and so I didn't do much martial arts at all after that did you do you practice music before that like when did you get involved in music I was uh growing up as a kid Bruce Lee and Alice Cooper were like my two Okay, so that's where the glam rock came from, like the makeup and...

[748] Yeah, and late mid -20s, I started playing in a band, and I really like performing.

[749] And I did a lot of jumping and kicking and wearing tight pants and, you know, and like, it was super fun.

[750] Like David Lee Roth style.

[751] Yeah, exactly, exactly.

[752] And somewhere between David Lee Roth and the New York dolls, you know?

[753] And very drunk, very, very fucked up, like through the whole era.

[754] Like, we would go, and we, oh, man, and I told Eddie this story.

[755] I haven't told a lot of people this story, but people asked me about it.

[756] My friends asked me about it recently, but I was basically on tour.

[757] So I'd do that for like 10, 12, 14 years.

[758] And we were touring England and the UK and, like, Italy and a few places like that.

[759] We did really well over there.

[760] And I had a seizure from just doing so much drugs and drinking so much.

[761] Whoa.

[762] And like a bad, like you basically, I had been, when I came back, the doctor said the vodka and Red Bull was actually the biggest component.

[763] The fact that I took a lot of speed over the three days without sleeping, let me drink.

[764] more vodka red ball but basically as the sugar leaves your body it goes down and you get sick and when the alcohol then leaves your body it draws more sugar out and you have a hypoglycemic seizure so I'm laying on the couch I felt terrible for like 10 hours and then all of a sudden apparently I just yelled something and people came over and I felt this electricity shoot down my arms into my hands and they just locked up and I rolled back down my eyes rolled in my head I thought it was 10 seconds later and everyone's looking at me like I just got knocked out you know and then And apparently it was like a minute or something.

[765] And I went back and the doctor said, dude, you've got to get your life together.

[766] Wow.

[767] And then I started training martial arts again pretty much that day.

[768] And then I trained, you know, three times a week, then five, then seven.

[769] Then I was doing jiu -jitsu Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 7 a .m., noon and 6 p .m. And Tuesday and Thursday, noon and 6 p .m. Wait a minute.

[770] You were training jujitsu three times a day?

[771] Three times a day, Monday, Wednesday, twice a day, Tuesday, Thursday, for about six months.

[772] And then people kind of knew me a little in Canada, like on television, doing stuff.

[773] I was like a reality show judge and the network said oh you're gonna fight well why don't we do a TV show about that wow and that kind of allowed me I really wanted to be in the fight world that's what I loved the second I kind of had you know been not living a crazy lifestyle all I wanted to do is martial arts and then really from that minute on that's all I kind of did that's all I was interested in wow wow that's crazy that you blacked out from Red Bull and vodka so the hypoglycemic aspect of it is just super bad for you yeah oh yeah they in fact my wife just told me this morning unrelated she said she was on the internet and she said uh Toronto looking to ban vodka or alcohol and red bull served in bars just just popped up this morning on the internet that's so crazy I never thought of that as a bad drink yeah yeah very dangerous there's apparently once you something like that happens to you look it up on the internet there's a lot of going on.

[774] Hypolycemic seizures as a result of ronka redballs.

[775] That's so funny.

[776] Well, when it's hypoglycemic, what if you use sugar -free red bowl?

[777] Does it have a less than effect?

[778] It could help.

[779] I'm trying to give me, I'm enabling folks.

[780] Give it a go.

[781] I feel like it's always like a weird thing when you mix an up or and a downer too, right?

[782] And that's what you're doing with alcohol and red bull.

[783] If you smoke a bit of weed and you drink a coffee, it's kind of the same thing.

[784] Not really, though, because I don't think weed is a downer.

[785] It's not a downer in terms of like a depressant.

[786] Alcohol is a true depressive.

[787] We'd, like, you could smoke a joint and lift weights and have a great workout.

[788] I can't.

[789] You can't?

[790] No, man. You need to hang out with me more.

[791] Yeah, maybe so.

[792] Oh, man, all I want to do is like, chill out.

[793] I'll watch fights.

[794] I'll do a bit of writing or whatever, but I tend to get a little introverted and a little mellow.

[795] I don't know.

[796] It's just...

[797] You know what's fantastic?

[798] Weed and yoga.

[799] Yeah, that would make sense to me. It's amazing.

[800] It's amazing.

[801] Stretching.

[802] Like, I was talking to my friend Aubrey about this the other day.

[803] Like, there's this buddy that we know that makes these, they're called jambos, these, these organic edibles.

[804] It's like, he uses honey instead of, like, processed sugar, and they're really delicious.

[805] And they're super strong.

[806] And, you know, Aubrey ate one and then went on this, like, two -hour stretching and, like, Rampage was, like, using a crossball to roll out all the tight tissue.

[807] Yeah, that makes sense.

[808] Just makes you really in tune.

[809] It makes you feel like...

[810] I like lifting weights on it because it makes me, like, feel like what my body's doing.

[811] I feel like I can get, like, a sense, a better...

[812] I'm more in tune, more sensitive.

[813] Yeah, I'd be afraid of...

[814] Not afraid, but I don't feel like doing something physical, but I definitely give it a try.

[815] Is weightlifting for you, that's become like a martial art, right?

[816] It is to me. I think of, especially Olympic lifting, that's a martial art. In what way?

[817] Like, at Olympic lifts, like, say, you know, clean or a snatch, you work forever on the little details to try to make yourself calm enough to be able to express yourself with the lift.

[818] Like to be able to really put it all together.

[819] You move one way wrong, you don't nail the lift.

[820] You distribute your weight different in your feet.

[821] You don't nail the lift.

[822] You don't drive and tie your hips together with the same time that you're supposed to go up on your toes and shrug.

[823] You don't hit the lift.

[824] So it becomes this ongoing work to try to make this thing better.

[825] I see what you're saying.

[826] Yeah.

[827] And man, Doing an Olympic clean to me is one of the great things in the world.

[828] To be able to just really hit one.

[829] It's such a full body exercise, too.

[830] It's like really enhances your ability to explode.

[831] Anytime you're doing anything where you're pushing up from your toes from the ground and extending and lifting it up over your head and forcing your whole body to fucking power that up, everything, your whole chain, your posterior, your, all your, your, your core, your spine, like everything, your shoulder, or your delts, your quads, your toes are pushing.

[832] That's why, like, Steve Maxwell is a big proponent of lifting weights barefoot.

[833] Yeah.

[834] He thinks that, you know, when you have a, like, especially a spongy, sort of like a running shoe on where it's like a lot of give, that you're not feeling, you know, you're not engaging your toes, pushing off the ground.

[835] Yeah, I think it would also take away some of your force.

[836] Some of the force you're exerting, it would kind of absorb it a little bit.

[837] I definitely, a lot of the Olympic lifters around where I go, I go this place, Bang Fitness in Toronto, and it's just like, it's the best part of my week to go in there.

[838] And most of the guys who Olympic lift just use the tiny, tiny, tiny shoe.

[839] Yeah, really thin, soul, yeah.

[840] I like those.

[841] A lot of people criticize those toe shoes, you know, apparently they made a bunch of ridiculous claims that aren't necessarily true.

[842] But I still like them.

[843] I love them for lifting weights.

[844] They're so comfortable for lifting weights.

[845] And again, the same thing, they're really flat.

[846] and they make you feel.

[847] I like the fact that the toes are all free -moving because you can push off with those things.

[848] You feel like your connection to the ground.

[849] But, yeah, I'm a big fan of Olympic lifts.

[850] I'm a big fan of, obviously, of kettlebells.

[851] I'm a big fan of anything where you're doing these explosive strength exercises.

[852] They just make your body so much goddamn stronger.

[853] You just feel good doing them.

[854] You talk about drugs or whatever.

[855] It's like you get endorphins from doing full body.

[856] Hey, have you ever seen that on the internet?

[857] These kinesiologists broke down in like milliseconds.

[858] Bruce Lee's one -inch punch.

[859] Yeah, isn't that crazy?

[860] And they show that it's actually the order in which his body fires.

[861] And it's like the millisecond, the shred of a millisecond in between the different body parts kind of firing one after the other.

[862] It's fascinating.

[863] It is fascinating.

[864] You know, I used to be a, well, I still am a huge fan of Mike Tyson.

[865] But one of the things that I used to always be fascinated about Tyson and people didn't comment on is, the size of his fucking legs.

[866] Like, that's where all the power was coming from.

[867] He was, like, pushing off the floor, constantly, like, pushing off the floor and just everything was, like, thrusting from the bottom.

[868] And when you see a guy punching, you assume, like, oh, it's his body, his upper body, his arms are throwing the punch.

[869] But really, with, like, a guy like Tyson, those vicious power punches, it was all coming from his ass.

[870] It was called from his toes down, pushing off, and all his quads and its, upper body throwing it into it, it's amazing how much of that is, how much of your, your full body is involved in techniques.

[871] Well, and kettlebells, Olympic lifts, stuff like that, that way, that, that, that, that, that, the bottom half attaches to the top half, that strength in between those two.

[872] That's the big, definitely the big.

[873] When you compete, what way do you compete at?

[874] 135.

[875] Whoa.

[876] How do you make?

[877] What do you walk around at?

[878] Probably 158 right now.

[879] Wow.

[880] That's a lot.

[881] You drain yourself, huh?

[882] Yeah.

[883] I mean, when I'm, was fighting for me even at the beginning was trying to figure out what's going on like really understand it to the point that I can fairly analyze it and I really felt like that I had to go in and do it also you want to you become a better person going and doing that you know pushing you talked about it just today we're pushing taking risks going and putting yourself in harm's way putting yourself at risk of failure I mean that's part of it but really it's to figure out stuff being forced to make heavy weight it's tough going to a way in and seeing I want to kill you that's all of those experiences, I think.

[884] It helped my real calling of analyzing fights.

[885] Why did you decide to cut so much weight?

[886] It started out.

[887] My first fight, I probably walked around at 145 pounds and then you cut weight and your next fight you're 148 pounds.

[888] And then you cut all that weight and you come back and you gain your 150 pounds.

[889] And over, I was also 39 when I took my first fight and I'm 45.

[890] So over the six years, I gained three pounds a year.

[891] Just muscle lifting weights.

[892] Yeah, lifting weights, working really hard, changing my life from, you know, eating burgers and shit and drinking beer at lunch to working out twice a day and change.

[893] All of that just added three, four pounds of muscle a year.

[894] And each time you cut weight, after you've gained the weight back, you fought this.

[895] And then, you know, you've had your couple of days to eat pizza and burgers and stuff.

[896] The weight that you are then is a pound or two heavier than it was the last time you were there.

[897] Really?

[898] Yeah.

[899] At least it was for me. Yeah.

[900] So these guys, at least maybe in your 30s and 40s.

[901] So a lot of these guys, you know, they either have a perfect, and I was going to say they have a perfect diet, but a lot of these guys celebrate the way that you deserve to celebrate after you fought a fight, and they don't have the perfect diet right after.

[902] But it gets, that walking around weights creeps up a little bit, at least it did for me. Well, the lighter weight guys, traditionally, those have been the guys that have the shortest careers.

[903] The lighter weight guys, when they get into their 30s, it starts to drop off, whereas heavy weights, in their 30s, a lot of times they're just hitting their prime.

[904] You know, like you can have a heavyweight, like, look, George Foreman won the heavyweight title at 45 years old, 46, actually.

[905] And was the oldest heavyweight champion, it was the oldest boxing champion until Bernard Hopkins recently, which is just the freakiest of freaks.

[906] He's the strangest guy ever.

[907] He's amazing to me. Do you know him?

[908] Have you got to know him?

[909] No, no, no, no. I need to meet him.

[910] I've never met him, but I've admired his style.

[911] I just love.

[912] I was amazed back when he beat Kelly Padlet.

[913] Which was like, what was that?

[914] Like 2007 or something like that?

[915] Seven years later, he's still blowing people away.

[916] It is wild.

[917] Who's that football player that was fighting in, was it Bel -Tor?

[918] Hersha Walker?

[919] Hershal Walker.

[920] Jesus Christ.

[921] 50 -something, you know?

[922] He was 48 when he was fighting in Strike Force.

[923] Yeah, right.

[924] Oh, yeah, it was Strike Force, of course.

[925] Shredded.

[926] I mean, he was goddamn shredded.

[927] And just a beast at 48.

[928] But Hershey Walker is something going on there that's not kosher.

[929] I mean, with his brain.

[930] Because, like, he says that he eats, like, a salad and drinks a bowl of soup in a day, and that's it.

[931] Like, that's not even possible to keep that kind of mass. Well, I mean, we could get some doctors and dieticians, and they would 100 % tell us there's no way that could be true.

[932] Right.

[933] So when a guy tells you that all he eats is a salad and drinks a cup of soup every day, like, okay, I don't know what he's doing.

[934] He might be fucking with people.

[935] Yeah, I don't know.

[936] There's something not kosher about.

[937] that though yeah it's weird but he's so yoked it's also it's crazy to see that kind of muscle mass on a 48 year old guy yeah like no loss of muscle mass in fact like he looks he looks like a 25 year old guy in his prime well the science i mean you it is not cool to suggest that somebody's doing something but not talking about him necessarily you mean performance enhancing drugs something but yeah the science of many guys in their 40s 50s 60s and 70s the science is there to make a six I mean, we've all seen photos of those 70 -year -old guys just shredded.

[938] Look, it's Stallone.

[939] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[940] Stallone is like 67 years old now, and he's ripped.

[941] I wish I had his body.

[942] No, crazy.

[943] It's ridiculous.

[944] It would be fascinating to get a real, one of these guys on the front end of anti -aging and human performance science, that science, to figure out, like, okay, a bodybuilder uses this much.

[945] A guy, like, say, an actor on CSI maybe uses, like, this much, you know, like anti -aging.

[946] How much is this 70?

[947] How much is Stallone using?

[948] You know what I mean?

[949] To get a sense of where the chemistry is happening.

[950] Like, is this more?

[951] Is this different?

[952] Do you have the new shit that we don't know about?

[953] Like, what's going on at the elite level?

[954] Like, Stallone was, I don't, I mean, he's not an athlete, so it's not a big deal.

[955] But he was caught at an airport once with a whole bunch of growth in them.

[956] It was in Australia because it's illegal in Australia.

[957] They have weird laws when it comes to hormones, even hormones that are prescribed by doctors that don't show any negative effects on the body.

[958] when used at normal doses.

[959] Meanwhile, they have alcohol at every fucking store, you know, every bar and every corner.

[960] Science is fucking weird.

[961] Medicine's weird.

[962] It's ignorance.

[963] It's not the science or medicine that's weird.

[964] It's the ignorance.

[965] Well, it's, no, it's the, it's the, it's the, essentially the people that are dictating the rules, the people that are writing the laws, they're ignorance about understanding the effects of, on the human body that these substances have.

[966] If it's done correctly and if it's done through proper medical supervision, it enhances the body.

[967] And that's what people don't understand.

[968] When you arrest a guy like Stallone who's showing up with growth hormone and he's, why don't you just let him take a shirt off and look, does he look bad?

[969] He's healthy.

[970] He's performing well.

[971] He's happy.

[972] His life is good.

[973] What exactly is going on here?

[974] It's also, it's not like he's competing in some sport where he has some unfair advantage.

[975] No, he's an old guy who wants to have a body that works good.

[976] And why is it okay that that old guy could go to the bar and just do shot after shot until his fucking liver collapses and no one stops that but you have a problem with him bringing in boxes of human growth hormone it's weird it is weird it's for some reason people when something happens that people decide something is a law or bad or they've made a decision on something it takes forever to change it like even and people are anti -science right they're anti -science so it's like you go no look this is why this is got no because since the 60s we've said this is bad therefore it's bad well i think when it comes to growth hormone and testosterone and all these different things where the real where people have an issue is because the way it's played out in the public eye has been all about illegal use in sports right it's been about the barry bond situation it's been about mark mcguire it's been about all these people that are taking these things and cheating in sports so because our associations have been all about people getting unfair advantages in sports, people automatically assume that these substances are bad for you.

[977] When you look at cigarettes, which are one of the worst things for you ever, no one's stopping that from being legal.

[978] Those are everywhere.

[979] People that make hundreds of billions lobby to make that stay legal.

[980] You know, like, it's like, I'm making $100 billion.

[981] I've got to get some government person to say, cigarettes is okay let's keep that cool you know that's it's motivated by finance commerce yeah but I mean I don't know that's why I don't understand I mean so is you could sell testosterone too and that could be motivated by finance as well it's just there's a big difference between the way people look at there should be a big difference between the way people look at someone who's doing something that's a performance enhancing drug that's allowing them to compete in an unfair advantage with an unfair advantage in a sport and doing it where if you're a guy like Sylvester Stallone you're doing it to enhance your life and you're 70 years old whatever and you're shredded like who gives a shit let the guy do whatever he wants well what if you know there's an element of trying to let to keep a difference between the people at the top and the people at the bottom what if all the people at the bottom got testosterone that would be harder to manage them harder to kind of what do you mean you know like the societal difference between you know the oppressed the people who are kind of at the bottom of the food chain the people like the people who run shit, the kind of people who kind of monitor how the world kind of works, prefer to keep people watching TV, not really, you know, eating bad food.

[982] There's smoking cigarettes.

[983] There's a direction to keeping some of society not super active.

[984] And those people don't want those people to take performance -enhancing drugs.

[985] They want them to smoke cigarettes and eat hamburgers and shit.

[986] I wonder if that's a real conscious decision.

[987] You know, that's a thing that gets thrown around a lot.

[988] That accusation gets thrown around there's some sort of a international cabal that's like looking out to keep the proletariat down.

[989] But not sort of so much saying that there's some room somewhere where 20 guys are in there making decisions, just the feeling, the sort of the way that society kind of breaks itself up.

[990] These laws happen for this reason.

[991] It keeps these guys rich.

[992] The way that society kind of divvies shit out, it kind of ends up being that way.

[993] I think it kind of ends up being that way more than anybody's trying to make it that way.

[994] I think that what people have when it comes to testosterone and human growth hormone and anti -aging and all these, the stigmas that people have on the, whether it's the efficacy of them or the dangers of them, is a lot of it is based on sports.

[995] It's a lot of it's based on all the negative press that we've heard about guys taking steroids in sports.

[996] And then there's, you know, in MMA, there's this huge issue with testosterone replacement therapy, which was up until very recently legal.

[997] Now, human growth hormone has always been illegal, but they were never testing for it until recently.

[998] When Chale Sunday got popped for human growth hormone, it was a big deal.

[999] Because it let everybody know, like, oh, boy, these new tests, like I had a conversation with Chale about it right after he got popped.

[1000] He's like, well, turns out these new tests are really good, you know, and that's really what it was.

[1001] They're doing these tests that cost $45 ,000 per athlete.

[1002] Wow.

[1003] Yep, it's all financed by the UFC.

[1004] Lorenzo pays for all this shit And they're testing I guess either do it or don't And they're doing it And they're doing it They have this like Really intense chain of evidence Where like the guy Will show up at your house Take your blood And it's like you know Fucking suitcase He's got chained to his wrist Like it's one of those type of deals The guy travels with it To wherever the lab is Like it's in his custody the entire time And they take the blood From your body He signs off on it And they bring it to the laboratory And then the laboratory analyzes it And you're finding you're there's going to find out a lot of guys are taking sure it's a really interesting one it's such a large thing it's like people will try to talk about it in a three minute chunk on tv or write one article about it but it's so it's such a large philosophical thing right we have to look back at what it means to strive and want to succeed and want to win and the desire to be great and all that i mean shit we can go and train at elevation which will increase your you know red blood cell count but you can't take EPO we which will do the same thing, you know?

[1005] Right.

[1006] And for a lot of guys, it's like, you know, I want, they want to be great.

[1007] And it's like at the low levels or the mid -levels, guys are broke, you know, maybe it's not as vital.

[1008] But at the top, if it means $5 or $10 million, and that chasing greatness as I've been there, and this doctor's like, I can help you chase greatness.

[1009] That's naturally, instinctively there to go, well, let's explore everything.

[1010] Right.

[1011] You know?

[1012] Well, that's where, like, the Balco guy came in.

[1013] Yeah, right.

[1014] You know, the Victor Conte guy who came along and came up with some different strategies.

[1015] for avoiding tests, some drugs that had been detected yet that they found were effective.

[1016] They sort of manipulated the components of some various performance -enhancing drugs.

[1017] And that's where they got that stuff that they called DeClear, that they were giving allegedly to Barry Bonds and a bunch of different people.

[1018] I had Conte on the podcast, and he sort of explained the whole process behind all that stuff.

[1019] He's a fascinating cat because now he's kind of working hard to stop doping in sports, which is like really a weird position to take when that was your whole career was, like juicing guys up.

[1020] I think I saw him on like Dayline or something.

[1021] Yeah, I mean, I don't know how I feel about that.

[1022] It's weird.

[1023] It is very strange.

[1024] But I also don't know how I feel, I mean, these guys that were on the testosterone, guys like Vitor.

[1025] Vitor is the poster boy, right?

[1026] For testosterone.

[1027] Because if you've seen the photos of him now, like pre and post?

[1028] It's really crazy.

[1029] Yeah, pull this photo of Vitor pre and post TRT because, you know, he's been saying you know I'm not on TRT anymore now it's just TNT and so then Chris Wydeman posts hold on is this what happens when you replace TRT with TNT and he shows a picture of TRT Vitor versus the recent Vitor who's off testosterone and he has shrunken I mean he has really like Luke Rockold just said that he has a chicken neck now I mean it's weird and that's gonna get to him but you know what the easiest thing to do to get a guy in the gym a big like now that's that's the wrong photos because that's a photo of him before testosterone replacement and after.

[1030] What you want to see is...

[1031] During an afternoon.

[1032] Chris Weidman comments on Vitor Belfort, TRT, and look for a photo.

[1033] But guys will be like, well, I didn't really need it.

[1034] It's like, then why were you taking it?

[1035] Yeah, how can he say that?

[1036] Yeah, of course, and you look at him.

[1037] But there's definitely, like, all kinds of stuff at play.

[1038] Like, that will dramatically affect his confidence.

[1039] Oh, yeah.

[1040] And his confidence, how you throw in spinning a head kicks in the eye, because you've got this level of confidence.

[1041] I can do it.

[1042] But that's not going to just affect how he looks and what he can do.

[1043] It will affect the way he performs without question.

[1044] Yeah, shrink that down so we can see the full image.

[1045] Yeah, wow.

[1046] Look at his body.

[1047] Like on the right hand side, it looks like he's lost at least 15 pounds.

[1048] Yeah, and his neck and the swelling under his chin off.

[1049] That's crazy.

[1050] His neck has shrunk.

[1051] He traps.

[1052] Look at the difference in the left picture, like how high his traps are and the right picture.

[1053] It's nuts.

[1054] I mean, his body is shrinking.

[1055] It looks so different.

[1056] It's a strange one, too, because you go into a gym with bodybuilders, you want to get a guy just freaking out.

[1057] He's just go, oh, he looks smaller today.

[1058] The loser shit.

[1059] Those guys especially.

[1060] But, I mean, a guy's been walking around in the world with the craziest body that you've ever seen.

[1061] And now people online go and he's got a chicken neck, that's going to affect his choices from here.

[1062] It's a tough place to be from him.

[1063] Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

[1064] Yeah.

[1065] He's definitely going to hear about all these.

[1066] these things that people are saying about him.

[1067] And it's interesting because people are saying, like, on the underground, people are speculating, like, maybe this is going to make Vitor start using again.

[1068] And if he does start using again, then he's going to piss hot.

[1069] You know, and it's also about, like, they're testing these guys.

[1070] Who's testing them?

[1071] Where are they testing them?

[1072] How are they being tested?

[1073] You know, is it going to come down to the UFC has to show up at the gym every day while fighters training and have them peen a cup every day?

[1074] I mean, is that is what is the way to tell if a guy's taking anything because you can the problem with urine test especially because like guys would joke around about it they would say it's not even a drug test it's an intelligence test you know that if you if you test positive when they're testing your urine you're a fucking idiot because the all this stuff like oral testosterone's out of your system within 24 hours human growth hormone is out of your system within 10 hours like you can't even test, I don't think, human growth hormone without using blood.

[1075] I don't even think you can test in urine.

[1076] So these guys are getting, that were getting popped, they were just doing it completely wrong.

[1077] So now that there's this really stringent testing, you got to think, well, guys are cheating in the Olympics.

[1078] If they're cheating in the Olympics, like, how are they getting away with it?

[1079] That's like some of the most stringent testing ever.

[1080] They're test because they know when they're going to be tested.

[1081] That's a new protocol.

[1082] Yeah.

[1083] A new thing.

[1084] It's like, okay, at three o 'clock in the morning, you set your alarm, you take this one at three, you know, you drink this many leaders of something before you do that.

[1085] Yeah, they'll find a way.

[1086] I mean, it's because the game is to try to win, and try to win every little scenario.

[1087] And the doctor who's trying to fix this thing, he's got a game to try to win too.

[1088] People are motivated to try to do great things.

[1089] And this doctor's assignment in life, your assignment in life, well, you have 20, you know, you'll make people laugh and call fights and do a million things.

[1090] But his is to beat drug tests.

[1091] doctor, this one doctor here, his goal is to go out there, wake up tomorrow and figure out how to win this contest, beating this test.

[1092] Yeah, I'm really curious to see what's going to happen to these guys that were on testosterone replacement and now they're off.

[1093] Because Chale Sundan's retired.

[1094] He's out of the business, but Vitor's still in it.

[1095] And Vitor is one of the few guys from 1997 when he made his debut that is at the elite level today in 2014 and his ready to fight for a title.

[1096] So it's, it's really interesting.

[1097] It's really, really interesting.

[1098] But hormones are a weird thing, too.

[1099] My thyroid burned out.

[1100] And I never thought of this until like, this is this how stupid.

[1101] Like, I grew up by a nuclear power plant, like in this town called Pinawa, Manitoba.

[1102] There's like a nuclear research plant there.

[1103] And when I was young, my mom's thyroid went out.

[1104] And then when I was in my 30s, mine just ended up dying as tumors in it.

[1105] So if they fixed it up, you take a hormone, two hormones that take your T3 and T4, and the other one is thyroid, T -SH, thyroid stimulating hormone.

[1106] Those three things go out of whack when your thyroid is off.

[1107] You feel like shit, like you can't function when your hormones go out of whack like that.

[1108] So imagine somebody, I don't know what it would be like to have your testosterone at that level, but it's got to throw you the fuck out of whack.

[1109] Yeah, well, these guys that get off of it, The thing is when you take testosterone, you put this artificial testosterone in your body, your body stops producing regular testosterone.

[1110] So if they had low tests before, it's even lower now because your body stops taking it.

[1111] You're injecting all the stuff into your system.

[1112] And, you know, he's only 37 years old.

[1113] It's a weird thing to have, like, old man testosterone levels at 36, 37 years old.

[1114] And then to have to face a fucking beast like Chris Wyden, knowing that Vitor Belfort, like when he fought Michael Bisping, when he fought Luke Rockhold, when he fought Dan Henderson all these guys, he was on this artificial stuff and it was making him super confident, he was built he was strong, he was super explosive and now all that's gone and now he's still got technique.

[1115] And Wydman's a motherfucker and he's like man you look at that guy you look at what, he's a weird one too like you don't even look at him and think he's just a modern amalgamation.

[1116] He's just genetically better than us.

[1117] He's more handsome than us.

[1118] He's funnier than us.

[1119] He's more confident than us.

[1120] He's genetically better than 97, 99 % of all men on earth.

[1121] And he learns fast and he's incredibly driven.

[1122] And he grew up wrestling and just, the thing about wrestlers, they just spend their whole time dominating other men.

[1123] That's all they're about growing up.

[1124] They dominate other men physically.

[1125] That's who that guy grew up with.

[1126] Then he learns well.

[1127] He's got the best coaches.

[1128] Everyone believes in him.

[1129] Like a guy like that.

[1130] We called it he was going to be Anderson Silva he was in our studio and we're talking to him and you talk to this guy in advance and he fucking believed without a shadow of a doubt he was going to beat him even turned down remember this he turned down his contract renewal and said no I'll beat him and then I'll sign my new contract I know I'll have to beat him twice everything he said came true everything yeah he's an animal yeah that's crazy and he did it all with his knees all fucked up you know a lot of people don't know he didn't even bring his heel up to his ass like his knees were so arthritic and then he went and got that regenerine done in Germany, and then after he had that done, he still had to get his knees scoped.

[1131] But against Leoto, his knees were great.

[1132] And now he's throwing kicks at him and shit, and he's a different animal.

[1133] He's an unusual dude.

[1134] He really is.

[1135] He can take it, too.

[1136] That's the other thing about Wyman.

[1137] Like, Leoto unloaded on him in the fifth round, and he was still there.

[1138] And kind of asking for more.

[1139] Yeah, fourth and fifth round.

[1140] When he was at Fight Network, he had a couple hours to kill till he went to the airport and he was hanging out and ramdine started playing him in ping pong and ramdine was getting a slight better of him he fucking got dead serious i want a better paddle i'm not fucking around here dead serious and he's like i don't like to lose his pace it's still having fun he still we're having a great time but he did not want to lose that game it was not in him to let this guy beat him at ping pong he's not a ping pong guy even just is not having it just not having it there's a lot of guys like that i played jake ellenberger pool once and ellenberger who's a fucking stud he's not very good at pool and i've been playing pool a long time and he's fucking every time i was winning he's like yeah like you can see like he was handling it but he didn't like you know like but that's the quality that makes some great fighters that that that unwillingness to lose you know the guy who wants to fight you if you fucking beat him at pinball you know like that that that's that quality that makes them a great fighter and hating losing yeah once you're getting at this point where these guys are the top top guys they have to have all of it they have to have that quality they have to have that genetics they have to have those coaches they have to have that mental game or else there's just no way that's how good the whole level is now and it's still getting better it's shocking Ellenberger had that fight with rory and he's never been a shit talker and all of a sudden he was talking all kinds of shit on twitter and stuff and when he got in there it raised that pressure so high that you know it wasn't that I like I got to beat this guy it was I just can't lose bad to a guy I called a fruit stick on the internet and the pressure of it that's why when people are so excited about John Jones and Daniel Cormia I'm like this kind of although it's great I love that people are into a fight I love like that there'll be a million more people than normally watching a fight that's I love that that's awesome but for me personally I just want to see them fight they're going to fight whether they hate each other or not right they're going to go in there we're going to see 25 minutes or less of these two guys putting together their lifetime of everything to fight whether or not that guy hates that guy isn't really all that relevant to me yeah um i agree with you um i was torn on that whole thing because part of me loves the fact they're fucking with each other and getting into each other's heads but i think that it it does it's not a good representation of mixed martial arts to see two guys who are at the elite level have a street fight like that i hated that i loved when they were talking with no mic on yeah because that was real that was funny when john jones puts the mic and he goes Hey, pussy, are you there?

[1141] That's amazing.

[1142] Him, and then I would kill you.

[1143] I would kill you.

[1144] I would literally kill you.

[1145] And he's like, John, you think I would just let you kill me?

[1146] Yeah, that's, come on, Dania, you can do better.

[1147] I'm a big Cormier guy, man. Although John Jones is absolutely brilliant.

[1148] But when they fought each other on a stage, I hated that.

[1149] Stupid.

[1150] Like, two of the best athletes in the world, and that's the worst fight I've ever seen.

[1151] I don't want no part of that.

[1152] It's bad.

[1153] People are going, oh, you watch that show?

[1154] You work in that business?

[1155] Look at these idiots.

[1156] That's terrible.

[1157] But when they were talking about each other with a camera on, that's real.

[1158] And there's so little real in the world.

[1159] You fucking win some, like, hip -hop award, and you've got to thank God and your fucking producer.

[1160] And, you know, I just feel so blessed, and I want to thank the fans.

[1161] It's like, fucking bullshit.

[1162] Let me see what you say when there's not everybody there.

[1163] Yeah, that's the thing about that getting John and Daniel.

[1164] Apparently, that video was pulled.

[1165] Yeah.

[1166] It was more.

[1167] Apparently, when they said, guys, you're all.

[1168] On the internet, I think again, it's Melcher might have that.

[1169] Hey, guys, you know, you're being shot.

[1170] This could be around the world.

[1171] And Jones's face just went like, holy shit.

[1172] He was like, like he realized, you know, that that's the best part.

[1173] I don't know why that part didn't get shared.

[1174] Well, you know, everybody's trying to put up an image.

[1175] Like, John's, his depiction of what happened when he first met Daniel, I was just trying to make a new friend.

[1176] Like, what?

[1177] They both called the exact same story.

[1178] Only he said he I did this, this, this, he did that, this happened He was a dick And I go, yeah, I did this, this happened But I was just fucking around But they tell the exact same story Well he wasn't even saying he was fucking around He was like I was just trying to form a new friendship Like what fuck you were You're trying to let some dudes in your division know That you're the fucking king You ain't taking me down You know he's like trying to let him know He's trying to fuck with his head And let the gamesmanship begin And that stuff is definitely that's all interesting because that's all real too that's all having a real effect on the outcome of a fight all of that mental stuff you know guys are the weigh -ins how they act I mean you've seen the science where they looked at the smiles and wins you know and guys there's a science to it these guys so check that out on the internet these researchers these sociologists go and they looked at hundreds or thousands of UFC weigh -ins and they found that guys who smiled lost an extremely large percentage of them Really?

[1179] Yeah, for real.

[1180] For real.

[1181] And because that moment is a moment of the starting of the conflict between the two males, between the two alpha males.

[1182] It doesn't start when the cage core starts.

[1183] It starts when we're setting the tone of who's who in there.

[1184] And when the smile is a giveaway of a certain.

[1185] There's two kinds of smile.

[1186] One's called a chest share smile.

[1187] And it is a smile of, I'm going to fucking kill you.

[1188] And that one doesn't count.

[1189] They look at the actual types of smiles.

[1190] It's real.

[1191] It's fascinating.

[1192] That one doesn't count.

[1193] No, because it's a different expression.

[1194] You know, you can look at it.

[1195] The slivers of expression in psychology and what they mean, and that one means something different.

[1196] Isn't that fascinating the difference in, like, understanding facial expressions?

[1197] Amazing.

[1198] Like, human beings kind of get when someone's creepy, but, like, would a robot be able to figure that out?

[1199] You know?

[1200] Study finds smiling fighters or losing fighters.

[1201] But that's not always true.

[1202] John Dodson smiles every fight.

[1203] That's not a good example.

[1204] No, but...

[1205] He smiled before he fucks people up, too.

[1206] The math.

[1207] You look at the math and it's like whatever the numbers are.

[1208] There are exceptions.

[1209] They might lose whatever, 68 % of the time or 63.

[1210] That's higher than the 50 that you would think.

[1211] But that still means there's 32 % of other guys who smile and kick ass.

[1212] It just shows that there is a sway, you know, in the statistical truth of that.

[1213] That's funny.

[1214] Donald Seroni and Anthony Pettis.

[1215] Actually, I did a breakdown.

[1216] I'll send it to you of what the impression of alpha male posturing, the effect of the effect.

[1217] that has on fighting.

[1218] So, you know, like, guys will stand there and they'll have, project a certain posture.

[1219] There was a research done at the University of Harvard, Harvard University, about alpha posture.

[1220] And what happens if you're interviewing me for a job and I have a certain posture and they talk to you after, you'll score me much higher of your opinion of me. Also, yeah, and that affects your, when we go to fight, and I, like, Uriah Faber has that a lot.

[1221] And he projects a certain thing, and that will affect your performance.

[1222] But the science actually shows that it affects his performance as well because there's certain postures that when you do them, your testosterone raises a measurable amount and your cortisol drops a measurable amount just by doing a certain physical posture.

[1223] What?

[1224] Yeah, it's real, man. A physical posture makes your cortisol drop and your testosterone raise.

[1225] Well, instead of testosterone therapy, why don't guys just posture all day?

[1226] Some guys do.

[1227] Would that really work?

[1228] Well, there's a few of them and a big one.

[1229] Somebody tell Vitor.

[1230] Yeah, exactly.

[1231] Just drive that shit all the way.

[1232] neck will swell up again.

[1233] It's a Harvard research, anyways, and they did it to measure your biological responses to your own physical posture, but also there's an interpretation of the other guy.

[1234] So I broke that down, and then I took a piece of Donald Soroni standing there looking over at Pettus, and then I've superimposed what Soroni said after, and he said, I looked across the cage at him, and I looked at him, I thought, dang, I pissed him off, and he's coming hard.

[1235] And it was the worst performance he's ever had.

[1236] And he talks open.

[1237] Seroni's fascinating because Seroni's a regular guy who deals with fear and uses it appropriately.

[1238] And he talked about looking over and he literally said, I saw that guy and he said after I knew I had to see a psychiatrist, like a sport psychiatrist or a psychologist, because there's no way I should be about to fight a guy.

[1239] And the thing is going through my mind is, oh, man, I pissed him off.

[1240] Never should happen.

[1241] But it was in part the posture of Pettis that projected that on them.

[1242] That's interesting.

[1243] Yeah.

[1244] All each of these guys who wear red win a slight percentage larger.

[1245] All of a sudden, GSP is wearing red every time.

[1246] Really?

[1247] Because guys are looking for one and two percent incremental raises, and there are certain guys anyways.

[1248] Why is red make you win more?

[1249] I don't know.

[1250] But I mean, Mike Tyson always wore black.

[1251] Yeah, well, Mike Tyson was Mike Tyson.

[1252] That's going to wear pink.

[1253] Yeah, fuck, that's okay.

[1254] It's probably something that you see in the wild when you see, you know, a certain color in nature and it has an effect on you.

[1255] Red, huh?

[1256] Yeah, each of these things might be one or two percent.

[1257] In the end, if you can't fucking fight, it doesn't matter.

[1258] Right.

[1259] So if you have the physical skills and you have the technique and then you add on those other things.

[1260] Yeah, imagine both guys at the top level have all that.

[1261] They both have the best strength and conditioning on earth.

[1262] They both have the entire human history of fighting skills.

[1263] They both have all the mental training.

[1264] They have all that shit.

[1265] Shit, man, if I could get a half a percentage of increase on my side in any way, let's stack up two or three of those half percentages.

[1266] I wonder what the red thing is.

[1267] That's a weird one.

[1268] It's true in all sports.

[1269] Really?

[1270] Really?

[1271] Have won a slightly larger percentage of time than any other color.

[1272] Really?

[1273] Yeah.

[1274] Wow.

[1275] Why red?

[1276] I don't know.

[1277] This is the kind of shit that fascinates me. You know, they also say that red sports cars get pulled over more.

[1278] Yeah.

[1279] It's something in nature.

[1280] It's something that we probably had to deal with as a threat evolutionary.

[1281] Well, red is a threatening thing.

[1282] Like, if you see an animal that's red, like a solid.

[1283] snake that's red you assume that that's a snake that could poison you you know but like animals there's no red predators are there are there but it there might have been certain thousands of years ago yeah of course yeah so it's red is a winning color fascinating so all they start stacking up all these sizes so now i got years worth of fucking breakdowns i can do just from all these things to reading and looking and it's like you start to combine them you know you got the the evolutionary hand and you got the jaw and you got red winning you got alpha posture, you put all that shit together.

[1284] What the fuck does that mean?

[1285] That's what I'm doing with my life.

[1286] That's interesting.

[1287] You know, I also am fascinated and I want to bring this back to you competing at such a lightweight.

[1288] I'm fascinating by the science of weight cutting and the negative aspects of weight cutting.

[1289] This is an important part of MMA.

[1290] And one of the best examples, in my opinion, is Anthony Rumble Johnson.

[1291] Anthony Rumble Johnson who fought at 170 for the majority of the first stint of his UFC career.

[1292] fought one fight at 185 with Vitor Belford.

[1293] Actually didn't even make the weight, was overweight, got cut from the UFC, and then started fighting heavyweight.

[1294] Fucked up, Andrei Roloski as a heavyweight was destroying guys.

[1295] Bro his jaw, I think.

[1296] In the first round, almost stopped him.

[1297] Really, probably they should have stopped that fight.

[1298] Then fought in the UFC as a light heavyweight, two fights in a row has just been a murderer.

[1299] Phil Davis is a world -class dude.

[1300] Couldn't take full Davis couldn't take him down and just got battered on the feet.

[1301] and then destroyed Little Nog in the first round, 40 seconds of the first round, just lit him up like a Christmas tree.

[1302] And it looks like the scariest guy in the world, the 205 pounds, when his first career was 35 pounds lighter than that.

[1303] That's crazy.

[1304] I remember seeing him in Ohio, and I was sitting in the stands.

[1305] It was Rampage versus Keith Jardine.

[1306] And I was sitting in the stands, and there's these pretty girls.

[1307] Look at the size of him.

[1308] What the fuck?

[1309] He's amazing, man. What fight is that?

[1310] Staples Center.

[1311] It's probably...

[1312] Was that Phil Davis?

[1313] No. It's Anthony Johnson.

[1314] God, damn.

[1315] That might have been him when he fought at 170, which is ridiculous.

[1316] Crazy.

[1317] But I saw him, and there was these hot girls and like eight UFC fighters walked over.

[1318] Oh, hi, great to see you.

[1319] And I was like, okay, those are the Ohio checks, right?

[1320] And Anthony walks over just to say hello, I don't know how they might have fucking had a real job.

[1321] I don't know.

[1322] I projected that on him because they were pretty.

[1323] And he goes over it.

[1324] That's him at 170.

[1325] I turned to my buddy and I'm like, that huge guy, that fucking enormous guy looks a lot like Anthony Johnson.

[1326] And it was Anthony Johnson and like 240 pounds when he was a 170.

[1327] Yeah.

[1328] So, but yeah, I mean, the weight cutting thing.

[1329] I don't know how he did that.

[1330] Yeah, I don't know.

[1331] He almost killed himself probably doing it.

[1332] And, I mean, if we're talking about measuring things that really work, looking at the math of like, is this better than this?

[1333] Okay, great.

[1334] You're eight pounds heavier than the other guy.

[1335] That raises your, let's say, if we're going to score your likelihood of winning, it raises it 6%.

[1336] Well, it's the point of diminishing returns.

[1337] Yeah.

[1338] What if it drops you 8 % because of the weight cut and stuff?

[1339] It's true.

[1340] For me, I mean, all of this was a learning experience, so I could be a real analyst.

[1341] That's what I wanted to do.

[1342] So cutting weight was an experience that I really needed to have and understand it.

[1343] But it just wrestlers did it.

[1344] They were good at it.

[1345] Wrestlers were beating everybody and they were bigger and everyone else is like, we've got to do this.

[1346] And I think you're right.

[1347] I think you're absolutely right.

[1348] You've got to see guys get away from it eventually.

[1349] Get away from that huge weight cut.

[1350] Well, I wish guys didn't cut weight at all.

[1351] I mean, I really wish they fought when everyone made an agreement to fight at what you weigh.

[1352] But everybody wants this advantage.

[1353] But the problem is when both guys are seeking an advantage and they both try to achieve that advantage, what you actually wind up happening is...

[1354] It's okay.

[1355] What you actually wind up happening is you have both guys that are fighting not to the best, extent of their abilities.

[1356] And so instead, neither guy has an advantage and both guys are compromised.

[1357] Yeah, I agree.

[1358] Yeah.

[1359] And it's also dangerous when it comes to combat sports.

[1360] The difference between wrestling, which is a combat sport, but it's not a contact sport in terms of concussive blows.

[1361] Where you're dealing with striking, there's a big difference.

[1362] Almost all of the instances of brain damage and death that occurred in boxing because of boxing matches were lighter weight fights.

[1363] Not brain damage.

[1364] It's like a cumulative.

[1365] Yeah.

[1366] The heavyweight guys, of course, got that as well.

[1367] But in fights where guys, like, had bleeding on the brain and then wound up dying, almost all of them.

[1368] There was one recent one that was a heavyweight bout with Eric Perez, a fought a Russian guy, and the guy had some swelling of the brain, and his career is probably over.

[1369] That was just a prolonged beating, unusual situation.

[1370] Whereas, like, Boombu Mancini and Ducku Kim, that was a severe weight cut.

[1371] Um, Gerald McClellan.

[1372] severe weight cut, a lot of fighters who wound up having like horrible tragedies inside the ring.

[1373] It was because they had depleted themselves, they dehydrated themselves, and then they got beat up.

[1374] Yeah.

[1375] If there's, there's got to be a death in, you know, a high level MMA one day and, and you'd have, you would guess that if there was dehydration in the brain, that would add to it for sure.

[1376] Well, a guy died in Brazil from cutting weight.

[1377] Yeah.

[1378] Yeah, right.

[1379] Right.

[1380] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1381] It's true.

[1382] It was liver or kidney failure or something.

[1383] Kidney failure.

[1384] Yeah.

[1385] Which almost happened to Daniel Cormier when he competed in the Olympics.

[1386] kidney failure, and they pulled them out of the Olympics.

[1387] Yeah, and that big weight cut that guys do, one of the tools they use is hyperhydration, where you use, like, a ton of distilled water to flush all your sodium, but it also is like a kidney trick where it's actually doing, tricking your kidney to perform a certain way.

[1388] It's really risky.

[1389] Yeah, I think in the long run, if everybody just said, yeah, let's just fight at a rest.

[1390] Sam Stout and K .J. Noon's had a fight up in Quebec City, and they just, like, two days out, they're like, well, how much you, weighing, man. I'm weighing about 171.

[1391] What about you?

[1392] Like 170?

[1393] You want to just fight at 170?

[1394] And they just did it.

[1395] Yeah, that's smart.

[1396] Yeah.

[1397] It is smart.

[1398] I mean, why torture yourself?

[1399] Especially you're both doing it.

[1400] Yeah.

[1401] It just doesn't make any sense.

[1402] If you're both walking around at 185 and you're both cutting down to 170, fight at 185.

[1403] You know, you probably both fight better.

[1404] The trick is that everything's that arms race we were talking about.

[1405] Everything is somebody looking for an advantage to win.

[1406] So we agree to do it, but then I'm lying and I actually cut 15 pounds.

[1407] And now I'm way bigger.

[1408] than you.

[1409] You know what I mean?

[1410] Right.

[1411] Until you find a way to make it have to happen or make something that both guys adhere to for some reason that's safe, and this is the way they're going to do it.

[1412] Yeah, it's interesting.

[1413] Like, B .J. Penn has a weird way of looking at things because BJ, although he dropped down to 145 pounds when he fought Frankie Edgar in his last fight, would not IV.

[1414] Yeah.

[1415] And, you know, and Dolce tried to get him to IV.

[1416] He wouldn't do it.

[1417] He feels like IVs are cheating.

[1418] That's weird.

[1419] Yeah.

[1420] The IV's cheating.

[1421] but cutting weight's not cheating?

[1422] It's weird.

[1423] So like dehydrating yourself, getting on the scale at 145, and then drinking water is okay.

[1424] Yeah, but putting it into you a different route is not okay.

[1425] Yeah, there's something about like needles.

[1426] It's not natural, I guess, the idea.

[1427] I wouldn't agree.

[1428] I think most guys wouldn't agree.

[1429] He's a unique one though, man. But a lot of debate over in our office with a few friends and stuff about his place in the world.

[1430] Personally, like I think BJ Pence, one of the greats ever for a million reasons.

[1431] And other guys, like certain people will say, well, his record says this or he never beat, you know, there's reasons that people argue it.

[1432] But I think the biggest thing is pure talent.

[1433] And one thing I think people sort of forget, you see a guy and you go to a guy's back and you trap his arm in there with the hook, that's a BJ pen.

[1434] You take a guy on the fence and you turn your body sideways and you elbow him when you're defending the single, that's a BJ pen.

[1435] Did we really see that at all before he fought Diego Sanchez, you know?

[1436] When you got a guy in a triangle But he hides his arm over here And you press her the straight arm bar against your face Until he gives you a triangle That's a BJ Penn There's all of these things that he did You know And and he I don't know It's a weird one I mean at the very least He should be considered One of the most beloved fighters of all time Well he is a great fighter for sure And he's a two division champion He's without a doubt He's an all time great What I think about BJ Is that BJ at his very best was outside of his comfort zone.

[1437] He brought in Marinovich to do strength of conditioning, and he just got in this unbelievable condition.

[1438] And when he fought Diego Sanchez, he was probably at his best.

[1439] He was just a destroyer.

[1440] And he had incredible endurance.

[1441] I mean, he fought and, you know, he had the same, like, pace deep into the fight that he did at the beginning of the fight.

[1442] And that's what plagued BJ.

[1443] BJ is just extremely, extremely talented, extremely game, very aggressive.

[1444] but didn't like to train hard, didn't like to push himself, didn't like to get outside.

[1445] I mean, you know, he'll dispute that.

[1446] Of course he trained hard, but did he train the way he trained when he was with the Marinovich's?

[1447] Like, he would talk about how he couldn't even hold his kid at night because he was so tired.

[1448] But that's what it takes to be at that kind of level, you know, and he didn't like that.

[1449] Well, and when we're sort of on this hand saying absolutely one of the greats ever and the other side of the debate, that's one of them.

[1450] And another one was, I think, his choices, his career choices, misunderstanding messages that I think were given to him when fighting.

[1451] And I think the biggest one, he fought Frankie Edgar and he lost.

[1452] And a big thing in his brain was, see, he doesn't cut weight.

[1453] He's the smaller man and he's faster.

[1454] I'm going to go back up to 170 and I'll be the Frankie Edgar of 170.

[1455] You know what I mean?

[1456] Frankie Edgar at 155, him at 170 is theoretically his interpretation of the same approach.

[1457] I'm the smaller guy.

[1458] I'm the quicker guy.

[1459] Enough with this other bullshit, I'm just better.

[1460] I'm going to beat guys.

[1461] And then he fought guys like Rory and fucking Nick Diaz and these monsters.

[1462] There's no way this 145 -pounder should be in there with Rory McDonald, just size and athleticist.

[1463] He should never been a 145 or either, I don't think.

[1464] I think he looked like this is skinny, emaciated version of BJ Penn when he was there.

[1465] I mean, yeah, you can make the weight if you just don't eat any food, but then your body eats itself.

[1466] Like, that's not smart either.

[1467] And then him at 170 was not like Frankie Edgar at 155.

[1468] Frankie Edgar at 155 is ripped He's in shape He's moving fast BJ had a roll You know he looked pudgy He looked soft He just didn't look like the same guy And he fought well He's a very good fighter But his physical The correct weight for him I will always think is 155 pounds Or if there was a 150 maybe You know if that existed Well I think 55 is fine You know when he fought Diego Sanchez At 55 was perfect I think the issue was That BJ needs He needed to be outside of his comfort zone He needed to be away from that camp and be, you know, with a Matt Hume type guy who organized his entire camp, brought in high -level guys, dictated his training, and took him outside of his comfort zone.

[1469] Yeah.

[1470] But he also likes being in Hawaii.

[1471] He likes training in Hawaii.

[1472] You know, there's a lot.

[1473] You know, there's a lot there.

[1474] There's that 10 ,000 hours theory, right?

[1475] There's a couple of, you know, guys who have done hard research under this.

[1476] And one guy, there's a book called Talent is Overrated, and it's buying that.

[1477] It doesn't matter what you were born with.

[1478] If you outwork everybody, you'll be the man. And the other one is called the sports gene, right?

[1479] And it's the opposite.

[1480] It doesn't matter how fucking hard you work.

[1481] If you don't have that gene, you can't do it.

[1482] Of course, the truth is somewhere probably in the middle.

[1483] Well, the truth is most certainly in the middle.

[1484] The issue is when you got a guy who's got excellent genetics and is working hard, then you get a John Jones.

[1485] You get a guy who has fantastic genetics, N is super disciplined and focused.

[1486] and trains very hard.

[1487] That's when you get true elite athletes like Josealdo.

[1488] You get the elite of the elite when you have the best of both worlds.

[1489] When you got a guy who works really hard, buddy a shit genetics, he will never achieve greatness.

[1490] They just don't.

[1491] I think you could get close to it even five years ago.

[1492] Like we mentioned Florian.

[1493] Florian doesn't have no genes.

[1494] He was just really smart and he worked really, really hard.

[1495] And look how close he got.

[1496] Close but not quite there because he just didn't have the genetics to do it.

[1497] But he sure as fuck got close for a nerdy little cat from Boston.

[1498] Well, you didn't have terrible genetics.

[1499] I mean, he was fast.

[1500] He had good kicks.

[1501] He had great jiu -jitsu.

[1502] You know, it's just these elite of the elite, the BJ Penn guys, the guys who just, they have that little something extra.

[1503] You know, these, these, these, you know, there's guys that just have, they have everything.

[1504] They have genetics, like Wideman, genetics and hard work and focus and mental toughness.

[1505] And breeding, his family was good, his family took care of him, pointed, taught him the things he needed to learn, like he had all of it.

[1506] His dad was an NFL player, you know, so it's like, those genetics are strong, you know, and that's all a big thing.

[1507] And also, I think growing up with brothers, there's a lot of fighters that grow up with big brothers.

[1508] They're used to fighting in the house all the time.

[1509] And those guys wind up being motherfuckers, man, like Matt Hughes.

[1510] Matt Hughes and his brother, his brother was a mirror, you know.

[1511] He's got a twin brother who's also a savage.

[1512] and they beat the fuck out of each other all the time.

[1513] And when you have that sort of an environment, man, you're extra tough, you're extra strong.

[1514] John Jones, he's two super athlete brothers.

[1515] And one of them is just so big.

[1516] 3 .40.

[1517] He weighs 3 .40.

[1518] And he's still to this day.

[1519] You see this guy's crazy.

[1520] That's not human.

[1521] Super athlete.

[1522] Certainly not.

[1523] If you came from outer space and you look down and you saw a pit bull and a chihuahua, you wouldn't think those are the same animals.

[1524] You saw me and.

[1525] John Jones Big Brother?

[1526] You wouldn't think we're the same thing.

[1527] Exactly.

[1528] You would just be like, oh, look, there's two different kinds of stuff.

[1529] This one's small and this one's 340.

[1530] Yeah, Bridget the Midget and Shaquille O 'Neal.

[1531] They're two completely different things.

[1532] Yeah.

[1533] Yeah, but they're the same species.

[1534] Yeah, there's genetics that are just undeniable.

[1535] And if you've got a guy who's got those fantastic genetics and he is just engrossed in MMA, I mean, his body, his mind, his focus, he lives it, breathe it, eats it, sleeps it, gets up in the morning and thinks, how do I get better?

[1536] That guy's going to be better than you.

[1537] And also there's physical power, especially when it comes to striking.

[1538] Physical power when it comes to striking is something you either born with or you're not.

[1539] Dominic Cruz is not born with it.

[1540] He breaks his hands all the time and his body's kind of fragile in a way.

[1541] He's got the mind for it.

[1542] But will he be able to beat a guy like Barrow?

[1543] Will he be able to beat the guys who have the genetics and have that physical power as well?

[1544] There's these guys that have that knockout power that's Anthony Rubble Johnson.

[1545] There's a God -given gift.

[1546] The world has given him a hand of cards, and it is excellent.

[1547] And then you put him with Henry Hooft who has a God -given gift to take guys like that and make them better, and now we're terrified.

[1548] Yeah.

[1549] It's fucking scary.

[1550] And, man, the beauty of how he moves is, like, I trained with a guy Evan Boris, who's a kickboxing coach who trained with Henry.

[1551] He was one of the guys carrying his bucket and learning from him.

[1552] And he's just as passionate.

[1553] Young guy up in Toronto.

[1554] And he tells me, oh, it gives me insight into how Henry thinks and, you know, tries to show me stuff to, you know, through Henry's eyes.

[1555] So you feel like you're learning, you know, one step down from this master, right?

[1556] And so his thing is with a guy like Anthony Johnson is that Henry Hooft is, we'll say to him, you know, you got to be ready.

[1557] If you are ready, you don't got to get ready.

[1558] That's the essential fundamental plan of Anthony Johnson the way he stands and the way he moves is at all times you're in a type of balance where you can deliver power because you have power and we just need to keep you in a spot where you can deliver it all the time.

[1559] So it's take down defense revolves around that the way his footwork works revolves around that.

[1560] It's all built so that at any moment in time when you throw a punch you're in the state to be able to smash with it because you have that gift.

[1561] Yeah.

[1562] And also, when you see a guy like Hooft or anyone who teaches that classic Dutch style of kickboxing, it's such a technical style.

[1563] And that style can be lost on someone who doesn't understand what's going on, is that every movement has a purpose, every technique has a purpose, every technique chains into another technique.

[1564] The left hook leads to the right low kick.

[1565] And all these techniques, they go together like bread and butter.

[1566] They're part of a system.

[1567] And Dwayne Ludwig is the best at breaking down.

[1568] says like he's got books like he was over my house the other day and he had all these books of detail all his techniques and how they intertwined together and what's he has steps and levels and he has a whole belt system based around these techniques i mean he's spent countless hours analyzing and and and categorizing and putting all this stuff together and that's what sort of lost on a lot of people that you illuminate very well with your breakdowns thank you i appreciate that man i can't tell you like how when when i wanted to do that i wanted to do a for people like you and Bang Ledwig and fighters and people in the...

[1569] I wanted them to like it.

[1570] You know what?

[1571] And it fucking means the world to me that people like it.

[1572] Well, you break down Jiu -Jitsu, too.

[1573] You broke down Eddie's match with Hoyler.

[1574] Yeah.

[1575] Yeah, at Jiu -Jitsu is something I trained a lot for a while.

[1576] And then I was in an environment where, like, I was literally, in one day, heel -hooked by, like, three guys who intended to injure me. Like, it was a really bad environment.

[1577] What are you rolling with?

[1578] Not a rat, but...

[1579] But it was like, you know, people...

[1580] And there were just guys in the gym, but there was a little culture of guys.

[1581] I'm like, who's that fucking guy?

[1582] Whereas makeup, he's on TV, he thinks he's a fucking, and they, like, came after me one day.

[1583] And so I started...

[1584] And they were trying to hurt you?

[1585] Yeah, yeah.

[1586] On purpose, like going for heel hooks specifically to injure you.

[1587] Two of them were specifically heel hooks for the purpose to try to injure me one day.

[1588] And later I heard, I'd been, you know, heard from a number of people that that was a bit of the M .O. of a couple.

[1589] Anyways, it's one of those things.

[1590] It's like, so I kind of got away from it for a while, and then I started reading Eddie's books, actually.

[1591] I'm going to train at his place tomorrow night.

[1592] Eddie's?

[1593] Yeah, yeah.

[1594] And I was, I trained, last time I was in L .A., I trained over there.

[1595] Fuck, you take one class with Eddie Bravo, and your whole understanding of everything you think you know about jujitsu, the whole thing fucking falls apart.

[1596] Like, it's so crazy that you sit there and it's like, these are positions people use.

[1597] You know, whatever, we'll take 10 or 15 of them.

[1598] And the guy goes in between, as you know, obviously, in between each of those, there's an entire universe of stuff to do.

[1599] in between the positions that people already know as positions, entire worlds, you know?

[1600] Yeah.

[1601] Eddie has done a fantastic job of not just incorporating his own techniques, but incorporating other people's techniques into his style as well, and just spent, just like Dwayne, countless hours analyzing positions and using them in the lab, using them in the gym, and using them with high -level guys and figuring out, like, a guy in his gym will come up with some new variation on a specific technique and then they'll add it to the rotation and then they'll drill it and then they'll try it from another angle and yeah yeah yeah yeah I remember when I was there just that one time and I'd trained with Eddie we met in Toronto one time I took him out for a bunch of drinks and it was funny it's a really cool dude it's really cool to be have a buddy like that and have him invite me to his gym and stuff and he you know I got his books and you know you see okay I understand mission control make sure you got the leg locked you know the invisible collar do do claw all that kind of basic stuff.

[1602] You read a little bit about his basics.

[1603] You read a little bit about Twister side control on the Twister.

[1604] And then you think you have an idea of what the Eddie Bravo system is if you read that.

[1605] Like I thought, well, in the world, the guys who know about MMA, I think I know.

[1606] You take one class with him.

[1607] You don't know fucking anything.

[1608] Like there was something we did from some truck position.

[1609] And my first curiosity was, I need to know how this guy's brain thinks, like why he thinks, how he comes up with this shit.

[1610] Because there was something that felt a lot like a lockdown position.

[1611] from another angle upside down while holding a leg.

[1612] And I'm like, okay, well, his brain.

[1613] Well, there's a lot of techniques you can reverse the positions of the bodies and just say, like, well, if I'm on my back, I get a guy with a triangle.

[1614] What happens if I'm not on my back, but I'm on his back?

[1615] Right.

[1616] And I'm behind him.

[1617] And then, can I catch a triangle there?

[1618] Yeah, it's kind of the same thing.

[1619] The arm is there.

[1620] It's like, remember when Matt Hughes choked out Ricardo Alameda?

[1621] Yeah, yeah, that front choke.

[1622] And they tee peeped up with his head, I think.

[1623] and that's essentially an arm triangle but it's an arm triangle from a completely different position from a head to head position it's a weird thing but it's the same position it's still choking off the neck on one side with the forearm and then with the neck with your own neck and your own body pressing against it on the other side and this rest of that element of wrestling that where that was sort of a bulldog kind of wrestling kind of stuff and then Schultz headlock yeah yeah and the weird like to either in the moment or have trained it.

[1624] Either one is amazing to figure out that the angle of elevating your hips so high drove that extra thing like all those little elements made it beautiful.

[1625] But you have a black belt under Machado as well?

[1626] Yes.

[1627] That's fucking crazy.

[1628] Yeah, you have a ghee black belt and a black belt in the air system.

[1629] Well, I started training in 96.

[1630] Yeah, well.

[1631] Wow.

[1632] And so when you were training in 96 and guys would say, oh, there's some purple belt coming through town, everybody was blown away back then, right?

[1633] Like, was that level still?

[1634] No, no, not in 96.

[1635] In 96, well, there was a few purple belts.

[1636] I mean, I started out at Carlson Gracie's.

[1637] So I took one class at Hicksons.

[1638] See, back then in 96, I didn't know that there was a difference between Carlson -Gracy and Hickson -Gracy.

[1639] It was just Gracie Jiu -Jitsu.

[1640] And the only reason why I went from Carlson's to Hickens at Hicksons was all the way across town.

[1641] Carlson's is much closer to me. It was like a 20 -minute difference in the drive, so I just started going to Carlson's.

[1642] And that was when Vitor had just made his debut against John Hess.

[1643] and they were actually calling him Victor Gracie.

[1644] And I even accidentally referred to him as Victor Gracie during one of the things that I did for the UFC in 1997.

[1645] UFC 12, when I first started working for him, baby -faced.

[1646] That's fucking, UFC 12, yeah, think about that, man. How long have you been doing that.

[1647] I've said this a few times.

[1648] I don't know, you probably don't realize it because when you're in stuff, you don't often, people that are driven don't often pause to look and be proud of what they've done, And maybe, hopefully you do that, but that you actually invented the idea of commentating this sport, which is very different than any other one.

[1649] And there's so many things that people you think are just terms, but they're terms that you said.

[1650] Do you know what I mean?

[1651] Things that you said that are common, descriptive things, they think they've always existed, but they didn't exist before you said them in a lot of cases.

[1652] And that's really a wild thing, the influence in how people observe this great sport and how big it influence that is.

[1653] Well, I definitely don't think about it, but the difference between this sport and a lot of other sports is that this sport, the play -by -play guy is not the play -by -play guy.

[1654] The color guy is the guy who's the expert, the martial arts expert, essentially has to be the play -by -play guy as well because he has to break down the subtle nuances of positions to people that are watching at home, especially when it comes to the ground.

[1655] There's a big issue with explaining jiu -jitsu to people that don't know jiu -jitsu so they can enjoy it.

[1656] if someone doesn't know like why is that guy hurting like what's what's what's going on there you have see one what happened there exactly there's especially when it comes to the ground game there's a bunch of positions that need to be illuminated so when when fights are happening i'm calling like i'm doing a play -by -play slash color job like i'm also i'm giving like if you watch boxing the color guy will say you know they'll sort of like give you like an overall a assessment of what's going on, but Jim Lampley, who's the play -by -play guy, will explain, like, the shots that are landing and this and that that's going on.

[1657] And then the color guy will say, well, he needs to do that or he needs to do this.

[1658] He says the what, and he says the how and the why.

[1659] Yes.

[1660] And when I worked with Morrow, I did a few dozen shows with Morrow, and he explains to you that in his case, he knows it, so he will do the what.

[1661] And your job is the how and the why.

[1662] So when you do color with Morrow, it is.

[1663] He does it old school, which is why he does it.

[1664] he's so natural at boxing.

[1665] Right, right, right.

[1666] You know, he transitioned into boxing so naturally because he was an actual play -by -play guy.

[1667] But the odd thing, and I'm a fucking full -on moral fan, and he had a huge influence in helping him with a lot of stuff.

[1668] But because if you're a play -by -play guy, and you're not really obsessed, if you're not deep into it, you will start to get certain things where you are missing out on stuff.

[1669] So he might say, you know, he's on his back.

[1670] Why doesn't he put the hooks in?

[1671] Well, he wants to ride heavy on the hip.

[1672] He doesn't want the horse.

[1673] He wants to ride it.

[1674] You know, and so you start to sort of project what you think is next.

[1675] And that's why when you do color, you're saying what is happening and what might happen.

[1676] Well, there's a difference between.

[1677] Morrow doesn't train.

[1678] Right.

[1679] He's not a black belt.

[1680] He doesn't.

[1681] You have to be.

[1682] I really believe that you have, well, I don't know if you have to be a black belt, but you have to be a high -level grappler to understand the nuances.

[1683] And I think you also should have some competition in your life.

[1684] some form of it where you understand the psychology behind competing rising through the occasion.

[1685] What's going on in that moment?

[1686] When you see a guy who's breaking, you know, you can learn a lot by watching, but I think doing is really important and critical when it comes to breaking down jujitsu.

[1687] I've seen, like I was watching a pride the other day, and someone, one of the guys, and wasn't boss, whoever he was doing it with, was talking about a position, and it was saying that he couldn't choke this guy out because the arm is in on the guillotine.

[1688] But at one time, guys didn't know.

[1689] Yeah, but that's hilarious.

[1690] It's crazy.

[1691] But what time was that?

[1692] It was like 93.

[1693] Like, people knew in 93 that arm and guillotines were legit.

[1694] So, like, watching this, this was clearly a guy who doesn't grab.

[1695] I think it was quadros.

[1696] Right.

[1697] He was a guy who doesn't grapple.

[1698] He doesn't understand.

[1699] And it's just going on his limited book of knowledge.

[1700] But it's not based on, it's not an extensive, comprehensive, like, encyclopedia of, of training.

[1701] and knowledge and of being obsessed with combat sports.

[1702] For sure.

[1703] Chevello I worked with too, and fuck is that guy fun.

[1704] He's great.

[1705] He's so fucking fun to work with.

[1706] He's such a good dude, and he's having so much fun.

[1707] And trust me, like, if Morrow hears me talking about him, and he thinks I'm being critical, it will hurt him.

[1708] He's a fucking very tender dude.

[1709] But I'm not.

[1710] I think Morrow's a fucking genius.

[1711] I think he's killing boxing.

[1712] I think he's absolutely killing it.

[1713] He's amazing.

[1714] He's great at Glory, too.

[1715] He's a good dude.

[1716] He is a great dude.

[1717] He is.

[1718] He really is.

[1719] And he really does love fighting.

[1720] It's just, what we're saying is just there's a reality of the difference between a play -by -play guy and the color expert position.

[1721] Yeah, and that's why he's such a good play -by -play guy.

[1722] And, you know, he can call it.

[1723] And you're right, the expert color is what's really going on.

[1724] If you, you know, if you were in this place, what would it feel like?

[1725] You know, I think that guy on the couch, he doesn't know what it feels like.

[1726] Even just have a guy drive his shoulder under your face to turn you sideways.

[1727] He doesn't know what that feels like.

[1728] It's fucking terrible.

[1729] And you've got to take care of that.

[1730] before you take over any other thing.

[1731] And there's certain positions like the Von Flu choke.

[1732] Remember when OSP fought Nikita Krilov?

[1733] And he choked him out with that Von Flu choke.

[1734] And like a lot of people didn't even know what the fuck was going on.

[1735] But because I've been around for so long, I've seen that choke before.

[1736] I remember when Von Flu started doing it on people.

[1737] And then we started trying it out in the gym.

[1738] Really?

[1739] Oh, that's so cool, man. It's a weird technique.

[1740] Seeing history like that, being, because, like, you know, there's a big difference between then.

[1741] later going, what was that?

[1742] Oh, it's a Von Flu choking going, oh, yeah, I remember when Von Flu was in the gym doing it?

[1743] That's fucking cool.

[1744] Well, there was also a scene recently where someone was trying this old Boss Rutan neck crank.

[1745] Boss Rutan has this, like, fireman's neck crank that he would do.

[1746] Side on?

[1747] Yeah, it's like from, from like, almost like he has a head on one side and the leg on the other side and tries to connect the two of them together.

[1748] And Boss used to tap guys with that.

[1749] Boss is a fucking physical beast.

[1750] You know, he's such a specimen.

[1751] But somebody tried it in a recent MMA fight And I remember in the middle of the fight going I've seen this before What fucking choke?

[1752] It's like you never see that technique Then all of a sudden it's there It didn't work But it could You know When I was talking about Pancras Boss was the other guy That it was like He's walking in the ring And you looked at that And like you didn't want to be in there With this guy Like you see the boss in Pancras That would have been as terrifying A human being as anybody had ever seen The intensity That's what I thought about him and Evan Tanner these guys were kind of competing and then him and Evan Tanner came in there and they just fucking went crazy like they just put it on people like they put a level of hurt on people that would have been terrifying had you never seen that before well boss was the first like really high level striker in in MMA I feel like boss was the first guy if you watch his pancreas fights he was blasting guys with kicks like you hadn't seen anybody kicked that hard before it was more about Jiu Jitsu before then I mean you have had like Orlando Viet who was like a high -level kickboxer was in the early UFC's but he was only like a hundred and sixty -five pounds or something like that was a small guy and he got manhandled by grapplers you know and he fought um was his fucking name the big judo black belt guy um his name escapes me yeah he wound up fighting the same guy won a fighting marco huas and marco hoas uh mounted him and he tapped when marco hoas mounted him because oh yeah yeah but fear tap from fear well there was also because he thought that the position was lost.

[1753] Like once a guy got you into that position.

[1754] It's over.

[1755] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1756] And for him, it probably was.

[1757] For him, it probably was.

[1758] He probably didn't have an answer for that.

[1759] So it's like, I can tap now, or I can tap after you hit me six times, or I can tap if you hit me 20 times, or I can go unconscious.

[1760] Yeah, yeah.

[1761] There was a lot of, like, shit back then, too, where people didn't know that you could get out of positions.

[1762] And he thought that when you got into a position, like, that was it.

[1763] It was over, you know?

[1764] It must have been a wild time in the 90s to be trained in that.

[1765] And because it was foreign to people.

[1766] Like, if you told somebody you were trained in Jiu -Jitsu, did they know what the hell you were talking about?

[1767] No, they didn't know what it was.

[1768] Remko Pardu was the name.

[1769] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1770] I think we might have called that one recently.

[1771] Remember he fought Orlando V and got him in side control and blasted him with elbows?

[1772] He was in that judo side control, like holding the head there and just boom, elbowed him unconscious.

[1773] Yeah.

[1774] That was fascinating, yeah.

[1775] Fascinating, fascinating.

[1776] It's watching those guys, like, watching that sport evolve like that, to like in the beginnings were just people trying their style out and finding out that it didn't work at all like remember there was that ninja guy who fought Pat Smith yeah and doing like those in step kicks which kind of John Jones kind of brought back like if you have enough reach and you know what I mean it's weird but you gotta have all that other stuff too you know these guys thought they were gonna kick you once and take your knee out well there's a lot of people that say that you know hey man if we fought I'll just kick somebody in the knee and take them out like yeah okay really you really think that it works that way Because, you know, the guy tries to not have you kick him in the knee.

[1777] Not only that, he might see you winding up and, like, going towards his knee.

[1778] What was this motherfucker doing?

[1779] Like, move his knee out of the way.

[1780] And then you're missing things.

[1781] Then you're all confused.

[1782] Your go -to move didn't work.

[1783] Yeah.

[1784] And that's sort of the thing.

[1785] You've seen it, definitely.

[1786] A guy goes in, you know, at the low levels, kind of where I get to compete and call fights and stuff sometimes.

[1787] Brand new guys sometimes go in their first thing in their mind.

[1788] This was going to knock a guy out.

[1789] The second that doesn't happen, they just didn't really think past that.

[1790] Now it's a scary and horrifying place to be.

[1791] Well, I remember Pat Smith fought recently in Glory, and one of the things that really troubled me before his fight, he said, I'm a one -round fighter, you know?

[1792] Like, I fight for one round, you know, I'm there to win or lose, but it's all going out in one round, and I'm like, you can't say that.

[1793] Because that guy's only job is to survive one round, and he's got it.

[1794] Well, not only that, it's a crazy way of thinking.

[1795] This fight schedule for three rounds, if the guy's exactly the skill level of you, it's going to take some time, man. Like, you can't, I don't know why he decides to do that.

[1796] I mean, he's one of those guys that, like, really likes to put on a show, really likes to have an exciting fight.

[1797] And that's one of the things we were talking about earlier is these guys that sort of sacrifice technical style fighting in order to make things more exciting.

[1798] But in the long run, that's not good.

[1799] It's not good for you.

[1800] It's not good.

[1801] It's not just not a way to do it.

[1802] Yeah.

[1803] And it changes things.

[1804] Like that idea that we're, the whole thing is going on to try to figure out who's the best.

[1805] Not to figure out who's close to the best, but the most exciting.

[1806] Or not to figure out who can, if we all agree that take down defense is going to be the most important thing for the next two years, who gets good at that and landing right hands.

[1807] Like it's not a, it's not a worldwide game to figure out who's the most exciting.

[1808] It's to figure out who's the baddest dude on the planet, who's the best fighter in the world.

[1809] Yeah, yeah.

[1810] And the only way you find that is guys competing at their very very.

[1811] best like using all of your like if guys played chess and they just said you know fuck all this strategy and shit I'm just gonna get gangster with my rook you know I mean that's really essentially the same sort of decision making it doesn't work that way it's all about using all of your talents your mental talents your emotional control your endurance all of those things knowing when to push when to back off managing your energy during a fight that's a huge aspect to of it as well.

[1812] Managing your energy is absolutely critical.

[1813] Managing, like, when do you pour it on?

[1814] When do you back off?

[1815] And do you have that under control?

[1816] Like, is that taking care of itself out of stress or out of fear or out of danger or because he pushed you?

[1817] I mean, you know, I talked about one rounders.

[1818] Kevin Randleman was, like, going to fight you for three minutes.

[1819] It was going to be the worst hell of three minutes that you've ever had in your life.

[1820] But if you could get past it, you've got a chance of beating him now.

[1821] Yeah.

[1822] You know?

[1823] Yeah, there's a lot of those fast -twitch muscle fiber guys that just, They have a lot of fucking explosion in the beginning, but they just slowly wear themselves out, and then there's nothing left at the end.

[1824] Tyron Woodley.

[1825] It's a great example of that.

[1826] He hates it when you talk about that.

[1827] I know.

[1828] Tough shit.

[1829] It's important.

[1830] It's my job, and I'm a fan of his, and I think that he's too big.

[1831] I think he carries too much weight.

[1832] I mean, the guy's got, he's got, essentially, he's running a race that's an endurance race, and he's got this monster truck engine, and he, you know, he's getting two miles, the gallon but for that first two miles he's a motherfucker you know i mean tyrant is one of the best athletes in mhm yeah his wrestling his physical strength is his blitzes is those blitzes remember what he did too what's his name the thoroughbred j huron and even carlos conned in the beginning yeah you know conned like until that leg went you were like how the fuck did he survive that blitz that was crazy well his street his lead right hand is so fast he's so fast so explosive travels we talk about Hendricks and how he can close distance this guy even more so yeah um but uh the what some i think athletic guys will try to do is make it not an endurance sport they'll make it a sport of sprints and comms and sprints and comms and that would be the way to try to be that athlete we haven't seen anyone make that work but i think that's what guys are trying to do is you know everything is a 30 second on in a 20 second recovery and fight that way and and you know and uh train that way and trained to recover that way.

[1833] But I can't think of anybody we've seen sort of make that really work yet.

[1834] But I think that's how that level of athletes trying to do it.

[1835] Well, it's also Chale Sondon had a comment on MMA and about just the physical demands of the body.

[1836] He's like, the reality is that 25 minutes is too long.

[1837] He's like, it's too long to fight.

[1838] He goes, you can't fight at your best for 25 minutes.

[1839] So it all becomes about managing when you, when you explode, when you go after the guy, when you, you know, and for Chale to say that, especially, I mean, you think about like his fight with Anderson Silva was a crazy endurance test.

[1840] I mean, he just went after Anderson that first fight for four and a half rounds, just full clip, took him down at will, just push the pace constantly.

[1841] Most like he was on EPO at the time.

[1842] At least we knew he was later.

[1843] Yeah.

[1844] And still, you know, that's his thoughts, is that it's just too long.

[1845] It's just too long.

[1846] Except for a guy like Mighty Mouse.

[1847] Yeah.

[1848] Which is crazy.

[1849] Why, it's 130 pounds.

[1850] The 125 -pound guy does not have the same requirements when it comes to gravity and there's nothing pulling on them.

[1851] That book I was telling you about that I'm in the process of reading that Rise of Superman, they talk about how some of these guys in these states, a lot of the analysis is guys in skateboards.

[1852] The guy in the skateboard who jumped over the Great Wall of China and guys who are flipping and downhill skiing and stuff.

[1853] that they start to believe that gravity applies to them differently.

[1854] You know what I mean?

[1855] They start to take action as if gravity does not apply to them the same way.

[1856] I mean, look at these guy jumps the fucking Great Wall of China on a skateboard.

[1857] Part of his belief when he's in a state to try this is he has to suspend reality to even fucking give that a go.

[1858] Because any normal person looks at that and go, there's no fucking way I can jump the Great Wall of China on a skateboard.

[1859] But this guy has to put himself into a state where that truth becomes not true.

[1860] Yeah, fuck that.

[1861] I know, right?

[1862] How does that work?

[1863] I don't know.

[1864] That's so crazy.

[1865] But he, this guy, you'll like the book a lot, man. I know I will.

[1866] The guy compares certain psychedelic trips.

[1867] He looks at how that also alters the brain chemistry and those times where people are at one with something where they've actually, in some ways, reality is just that thing we each have, and yours is different now.

[1868] Yours is different in the moments where you bring these brain chemistry together in a state of flow.

[1869] And when you're in that state, your reality.

[1870] different and if your reality's different maybe the fuck you can jump the great well kind of makes sense right because isn't reality in a sense subjective in that like how you feel about a moment changes what that moment means to you so it changes your reaction to that moment and i think that like those guys that do that park court yeah those guys have to be like that that is exactly right i'm fascinated by that shit those guys are nuts man but they i mean you hesitate for one second you die and that's the same with those flipping motorcycles same with free climbing fucking mount whatever you you get it you create a state where if you do not believe for one moment you're dead not well shit i lost a fight or oh man that cost me some money death yeah death and these guys you know and some of them will say i could spend months learning how to spend 20 minutes of yoga to get a taste of that state for a second or i can put myself on a rock face and have it for three hours out of necessity.

[1871] And that's what some fighters are doing.

[1872] I mean, all the top guys are operating in that state, all of them.

[1873] Yeah, the rock face thing is really interesting, isn't it?

[1874] When you see those fucking Alex Honnold crazy fuckers and they climb up these things, free climbing.

[1875] It's almost like a different animal.

[1876] Like human animals walk around.

[1877] Sometimes we swim and stuff.

[1878] We don't do that.

[1879] No. You know?

[1880] Well, he does.

[1881] But he's a human.

[1882] I mean, it's essentially like putting your focus into something and taking that something, whatever it is.

[1883] to the highest level that's possible.

[1884] And the mind is a big part of it.

[1885] I mean, he was talking about how when you're rock climbing, I had him on the podcast, he was talking about rock climbing, that when you're doing it, you're really pretty chill.

[1886] He goes, you don't really feel crazy unless something's really wrong.

[1887] He goes, most of the time, everything is really calm and really chill, and you're just sort of zen, and you're just, this is what you're doing, and you're just going through it, and you're putting the powder on your hands, You're sticking your hands in cracks and you're just pulling yourself up.

[1888] He goes, then you kind of get to the top.

[1889] For hours.

[1890] Yeah, for hours.

[1891] Yeah.

[1892] And doing shit that, in his case, doing shit that no one else does.

[1893] Well, I don't think they do that too much.

[1894] They try to just crawl.

[1895] I think the jumping up guys are fucking nuts.

[1896] It's all levels of nuts.

[1897] Yeah.

[1898] Well, you know, there was a piece that they did in one of those television shows where they talked about Alex where this guy who was also a free climber was like, look, it's a matter.

[1899] It's not a matter of if he's going to fall.

[1900] It's a matter of when he's going to fall, and he's going to die when he does.

[1901] And, you know, this guy's kind of freaking you the fuck out.

[1902] But then he talked to Alex about it.

[1903] He's like, man, maybe not.

[1904] I don't know if he's going to fall.

[1905] This motherfucker might just keep doing that.

[1906] I mean, he's a guy, Alex Honnold, that just, that's what he does.

[1907] He lives in his van.

[1908] I mean, he's got a van with all these, like, drawers in it.

[1909] This is where I put my toilet trees.

[1910] This is where I put my underwear.

[1911] He's got, like, this is a bed in the back of it.

[1912] He sleeps in the bed.

[1913] and then he just climbs everywhere.

[1914] The guys who get to that point of human performance, there is a level, it's so weird, we discourage obsessive compulsiveness.

[1915] You know, we discourage it.

[1916] I'm sure there are damaging things about it.

[1917] But, I mean, you tell me that fucking guy isn't the extremist version of that.

[1918] And yet it's been focused in a way that stretches human performance.

[1919] Yeah, yeah.

[1920] I think obsessive -compulsive is almost the only way to achieve greatness.

[1921] Yeah.

[1922] I don't think there's any other way.

[1923] I don't think you can be like this really relaxed, like, hey, easy come, easy go, you know, no big deal.

[1924] No, you have to be a fucking maniac.

[1925] It's all about how much focus you have on that goal, how much intent you have on that action.

[1926] And if you're not completely obsessed, I've always said that greatness and madness are next -door neighbors and they borrow each other's sugar.

[1927] Because you don't get there without the other.

[1928] You have to be, I know when I was competing, when I was at my best, when I was, a four -time state champion in Taekwendo, and I won the U .S. Open and a bunch of other tournaments.

[1929] I was crazy.

[1930] That's all I did.

[1931] I would train in the middle of the night because I knew that no one else was training.

[1932] I used to have the keys to the gym.

[1933] So I was to go to the dojangs with the Koreans crawl.

[1934] I used to go there at 2 o 'clock in the morning because I had the keys, and I would train knowing that no one else was training.

[1935] And that was like I felt like I got an edge that way.

[1936] And because I had seen Mike Tyson talk about how he would run when everyone was asleep because he felt like his opponent was sleeping, so that felt like that gave him an So, you know, I would like that.

[1937] And that kind of insanity, like, I didn't have anything else going on in my life.

[1938] Everything else I was a loser in.

[1939] But I knew I was really good at Taekwondo.

[1940] So that was what I, I sucked at relationships.

[1941] I sucked at work.

[1942] I sucked at school.

[1943] I sucked at everything except Taekwondo.

[1944] So that became my 100 % of my focus.

[1945] And I know I was insane at that time.

[1946] I know there was something wrong with me. It was a terrible way to live your life unless that's your only goal.

[1947] The scary thing is, let's say there's, you know, 10 ,000 guys who are living that way, at anything, comedy, like fighting, anything.

[1948] Only one of them is actually, we're going to get the 10 ,000 most obsessed, and we're going to find out who the very best most obsessed or, you know what I mean?

[1949] The genetics and the obsession must come together in the perfect storm, because if you're competing and you have the same amount of obsession as some John Jones character, fuck, that guy's just too goddamn strong, too big.

[1950] You see guys get in there with John, and then when John locks up with them and then sends them flying through the air, they realize, oh, there's another level of this thing.

[1951] When he almost took off to Chera's arm, that must have been fucking terrifying.

[1952] He's been in there with Chuck Liddell and every great fighter at 205 pounds over the last 10 years of not losing and training every day, and this guy does this to him?

[1953] Tears his shoulder apart in the first round with some new move that he had been thinking about doing.

[1954] John had just been thinking about it.

[1955] John is so brilliant in his ability to improvise in the heat of battle.

[1956] Like, he saw that Glover was loading up, so he decided to stand, like, right on top of him, and then he would anticipate, he would feel him loading up, and then avoid those shots and counter with elbows in tight.

[1957] And he was fucking Glover up in the place where Glover thought that he was going to dominate.

[1958] Yeah, and he went in there, and the things that just, he never even planned to use, but a lifetime of Greco -Roman playing in there.

[1959] And I'll, oh, shit, I win this position.

[1960] Fuck it.

[1961] We're going to win it here then.

[1962] Well, that loose underhook, that was what allowed him.

[1963] You know, Glover had this loose underhook.

[1964] So John just wrenched it, just yanked on it with the overhook and tore his shoulder up, man. And it must have been mentally freaky, too.

[1965] It's like, what the hell am I in here with?

[1966] I thought I was just in here with a guy who punches and kicks and chokes like the rest of us.

[1967] Right.

[1968] And what is he doing?

[1969] It's tearing off part of my body.

[1970] Well, John is just, he's always adding new wrinkles.

[1971] Like, John is one of the first guys to really get good at that front leg side kick to the thigh.

[1972] I mean, he's really, and even to the body.

[1973] On a downward angle, too.

[1974] It's scary.

[1975] Because he's so tall, yeah.

[1976] And also he's shooting down at your knee.

[1977] And John dropped Vitor with a front leg sidekick to the body.

[1978] You know, those long legs, man, a such a huge advantage.

[1979] We only measure reach with arms in MMA because we have this goofy system where all we do is copy boxing because it's such a young sport.

[1980] We copy boxing when it comes to reach.

[1981] We copy boxing when it comes to the 10 -point must scoring system.

[1982] both things are woefully inadequate when it comes to MMA but a big one is the reach of kicks because John can kick you from a range where you can't even touch him and he's hitting you with his best weapon from an outside distance that he owns and your only way to get past that is to go through that come on that's barely fair and his legs are so much strong everybody kicks harder than the punch everybody does and John's an excellent kicker so he's out there kicking the shit out of you And you can't even touch him.

[1983] And what are you going to start doing?

[1984] You're going to start doing what Rashad did.

[1985] Try to clear out of that range.

[1986] You can't, I mean, the way to handle it, if it's humanly, mentally possible, is to pass it and get in there.

[1987] But he's training you the way you touch an element, you never touch it again.

[1988] He's doing that with his fucking kick in front of you.

[1989] Also, I think it's fascinating that John is now at this level where he's been the champion for several years now, and he's very confident.

[1990] And he's also used to these championship contests.

[1991] He's used to the bright lights.

[1992] He's used to the big event.

[1993] It becomes a part of his every...

[1994] He understands that experience very intimately.

[1995] So when he gets in there, his championship fights with a guy like Glover, this is the big show for Glover.

[1996] Holy shit, this is it.

[1997] And for John, like, here we go again.

[1998] And here we go again is very different than, oh, my God, this is it.

[1999] Here we go again is a much more comfortable place.

[2000] Because every other time I've been in this place, I won.

[2001] People went crazy.

[2002] I made a bunch of money and I got even bigger.

[2003] Oh, I'm in this place again.

[2004] Okay.

[2005] And I love that his attitude after the Gustafson fight, like his attitude was I've always been asking for a dog fight and I got what I asked for, you know, and this is a blessing.

[2006] Yeah, and you know it is.

[2007] It is a blessing.

[2008] You don't know.

[2009] If you're just wrecking every guy, well, what happens to one day where I can't wreck you for four rounds?

[2010] Well, now he knows.

[2011] He knows what happens.

[2012] He fucking wins.

[2013] He dug deep.

[2014] That was one of the most important aspects of that fight is that he faced a guy, first of all, with the same sort of physical advantages that he has, A guy with a really long reach A guy who was an excellent striker A better, smoother, more efficient striker than he is Who took him down Added confusion to the equation Yep, did something unpredictable And then on top of that he still won You know, and then man I was really looking forward To that rematch It was a bummer when Gustafson hurt his knee But what's interesting is Gustafson hurt his knee They cancel the fight but now John heard his knee But the Cormier fight is still on Yeah, well it's run by Commerce Yeah.

[2015] I mean, we have to.

[2016] We're in the business.

[2017] I don't own the UFC.

[2018] What's the bigger fight, though, in your opinion?

[2019] I'm more interested.

[2020] They're both pretty fucking good.

[2021] They're both pretty fucking good.

[2022] I bet they're both, I think they're both tens.

[2023] Yeah, Cormier is so fascinating because we haven't seen it.

[2024] You know, you see, all you've got to do is flash up what he did to Dan Henderson, throwing them up in there.

[2025] No one's ever done that to Dan Henderson.

[2026] And then you got all this heat that gets regular people excited.

[2027] But, I mean, what happens when a guy got that close, and Gustafson's confident, He believes he's going to win this time.

[2028] He thinks he's learned some things.

[2029] Like, that's real.

[2030] You've got to do them both.

[2031] But I think you've got to do the one that the people are most excited about, which is the one where guys fight on a stage and then say they're going to kill each other off game.

[2032] Now it's more exciting.

[2033] It's almost like when Daniel Cormier grabbed John's neck and threw him back, he ensured that that fight was going to take place.

[2034] Yeah.

[2035] You know, because, you know, if Gustafson got knee surgery and John can't fight until January.

[2036] Well, in theory, we should go back to that?

[2037] Yeah, in theory, that should be the fight.

[2038] But everyone is so hyped up on the Cormier fight now.

[2039] But, you know, Cormier went into that fight, like he agreed to that fight with a preexisting injury that he's pretty vocal about it.

[2040] He has a partially torn ACL.

[2041] He's got an MCL strain or a tear in his MCL.

[2042] And now he has more of an opportunity to rehab it.

[2043] But when you have a partially torn ligament, like especially an ACL ligament, I don't know how much rehab you can do.

[2044] Yeah, I mean, you either get the same.

[2045] surgery or you live with it in that whatever 75 % state it's in until you get the surgery.

[2046] I think it's a 50 % state.

[2047] I think it's 50 % torn.

[2048] All three of those guys, it's knee issues.

[2049] I don't know if that's a 205 thing.

[2050] It's a height thing.

[2051] It's a high impact.

[2052] It's a wrestling thing.

[2053] It's a wrestling and jujitsu and well, I mean even kickboxing.

[2054] You're going to have knee issues.

[2055] But just the knee sucks.

[2056] It's a shitty design.

[2057] Shoulder sucks too.

[2058] Well, it's not that they suck.

[2059] It's that the human body is not designed for MMA.

[2060] Not for that.

[2061] Especially not for jukebox.

[2062] Jitsu.

[2063] I mean, Jiu -Jitsu is all about testing the boundaries of your joints.

[2064] Yeah, Omaplanade guys over that shit ain't supposed to do that.

[2065] Yeah, it's awful.

[2066] It's not supposed to do that.

[2067] Yeah.

[2068] And then there's a few guys, like Keene and Cornelius, that have just unbelievably ridiculous flexibility of their joints.

[2069] Like, what is that from?

[2070] Is that from straining them all the time and testing them in the gym?

[2071] A wonder.

[2072] Yeah.

[2073] Like, in theory, how do you stretch your neck?

[2074] You add those circles if you're, you know, or you stretch your lip or whatever.

[2075] Right.

[2076] Can we do that with ligaments and soft.

[2077] I guess they can.

[2078] Well, look at Hoyler Gracie when he fought Eddie.

[2079] I'm going to tell you something.

[2080] I've been in that position before.

[2081] You know, that is a brute.

[2082] When Eddie had that leg and he was twisting Hoyler's leg like that, that's called the vaporizer.

[2083] It is an unbelievably painful position.

[2084] I do not know how Hoyler didn't tap.

[2085] Yeah, mental.

[2086] That way, I don't think that was some biological thing he's altered.

[2087] I think that was a guy just saying, my life depends on, you know, his reputation, who he is, as a person, his business.

[2088] All of those things depended so heavily on him.

[2089] not giving into pain.

[2090] And I think he was capable of doing that.

[2091] But he has a history of having incredibly flexible joints.

[2092] Like when he fought Sakaraba, Sakaraba had him in that deep, deep Kimora, and the referee stopped the fight.

[2093] And he was furious.

[2094] He's like, I'm fine.

[2095] Like, he had his arm, like, cranked up behind his back.

[2096] You know, first of all, it's crazy when you think of the fact that Hoyler Gracie fought Sakaraba, and Sakaraba fought Vitor Belford and Vandalee Soba.

[2097] Like, think about the difference in size between those guys.

[2098] I mean, incredible.

[2099] Yeah.

[2100] I mean, just unbelievable.

[2101] He won the fucking Abu Dhabis at 145.

[2102] Yeah.

[2103] You know, how the fuck?

[2104] And fought those giants, yeah.

[2105] How the fuck?

[2106] That was another time.

[2107] And, I mean, I love hearing stories from guys that were around in the early days when they're like, yeah, well, you know, we drove nine hours because they said we were going to have an MMA fight and we got there.

[2108] And they said, well, your opponent's not here, you got this guy.

[2109] And it's like, I weigh 140.

[2110] He's 175.

[2111] They're like close enough.

[2112] Fight them.

[2113] Yeah.

[2114] You know, that's how it was.

[2115] And, well, who is that guy?

[2116] Where does he train?

[2117] No, no. He just got out of prison.

[2118] Or do you want the bouncer?

[2119] I mean, and that's who you fought.

[2120] And these lunatics on the front end of the sport were driving around for $100, spending $300 to get there, not knowing.

[2121] I mean, you didn't know if a guy knew the death touch or something.

[2122] You didn't know if there was, you didn't know if there was some other thing he could do.

[2123] Yeah, people believed in the death touch back then.

[2124] What if they knew it?

[2125] There's people still teaching that stupid shit.

[2126] And there's people out there, they're also still teaching, you know, what we do works on the streets.

[2127] Yeah.

[2128] The streets are very different.

[2129] What you do as a sport.

[2130] That nonsense drives me Fucking bananas I was on the Open Anthony show And they used to have this guy They did their security He was this fucking fake karate guy And he would always talk about like Street techniques What we're doing is all about street Street defense And I go let me tell you something Dude what works on train killers Is the best shit All this nonsense about like street techniques Like you're going to do that and do this And that's going to work better And you're going to fucking Death touch somebody in their solar plexus And go after their pressure points bullshit it's all nonsense you know and if you try to bite somebody let me tell you some if a guy gets on top of you and mounts you and you just bid him he's going to fucking kill you he's going to take your eyes out he's going to kill you he's going to break your jaw he's going to tear your arms out of their sockets and leave you a cripple and that a guy could do that for sure and if you get all this street shit in your head it's dangerous but if you train systema or cravmigar whatever and you're up against some dumbass it'll be valuable sure but if you're up against a trained fighter, you're going to be in a lot of trouble.

[2131] But you should always prepare for a trained fighter.

[2132] And that's the difference between like these street systems versus real MMA.

[2133] Like real MMA is the stuff that works.

[2134] It's the best application the human body has when it comes to using your body in a combat sport scenario.

[2135] It's the best.

[2136] That's the reason why you don't see kung fu in MMA.

[2137] I mean, Roy Nelson jokingly calls himself a kung fu fighter.

[2138] And I know he has actually done some kung fu training.

[2139] but the reality is Roy's throwing a fucking heavy overhand right and he's got a black belt and jiu -jitsu to back it up.

[2140] Yeah, exactly.

[2141] And if, I mean, hey, if for whatever reason you like wearing a kung fu outfit and doing all this stuff, it makes you feel good, fucking go train it, for sure.

[2142] But don't try to tell professional athletes and people who analyze it all day every day that this thing is going to be the thing because why the fuck isn't George St. Pierre using it?

[2143] George used to, he told me one time, that he just said it, I'm sure it happens.

[2144] and see you a lot too, that people will come up to him and say, hey, George, you know, you do really good, man, hey, we should train together.

[2145] I have Kung Fu Studio down the street.

[2146] And they would literally, I can teach you some shit and really, literally believe.

[2147] Now, when they're talking to the greatest fighter in the world at the time, that they got some secret shit back on St. Denis Street in Quebec and Montreal that he could teach George St. Fierre.

[2148] This guy really fucking believes that.

[2149] They really believe they got some death touch, they've got to pull out.

[2150] going to go, this is going to change my whole career.

[2151] Thank you for teaching me death touch.

[2152] That's just got to happen to you too, right?

[2153] Oh, yeah.

[2154] Well, there's always some guy that says that he has some new thing that no one's ever seen before.

[2155] He has his master can't be defeated.

[2156] There's a bunch of knuckleheads out there, man. But George is an amazingly patient guy.

[2157] I've seen George deal with a lot of fucking people.

[2158] He's one of the nicest guys that ever reached like a super high level of any combat sport.

[2159] And really open -minded.

[2160] Like, he'll listen to like I've seen him exchange techniques to people I've trained with him I saw him turning sidekick with him and he had his knee low he was using his knee low and without question you train fucking taekwondo for 10 years competing all over that's how you do is a turning sidekick and he got and he understood that yeah well it was out that was a weird moment because John Donaheher was a friend of mine was talking and we were out to eat after a fight me him and Eddie and he said do you guys know any good taekwondo guys George wants to work on the mechanics of a spinning back kick and I said this is going to sound so stupid but I have to say it like I have a great spinning back kick like my spinning back kick I really know how to do it better than anybody and you know you say that and people go get the fuck out of here lifetime martial arts expert I mean why the fuck can't you say that because I'm a comedian and a fucking commentator I'm not a fighter you know I mean that those days are long gone but that doesn't mean that a lifetime mastery of a technique isn't that's true but so many people have ridiculous There's some, and I'm not going to name any names, but I know a lot of guys that are involved in the same sort of thing that I'm involved in, they'll tell you that they're great.

[2161] And then you train with him, you're like, oh, fucking Christ, I'm wasting my time.

[2162] So I had this moment where I was like, tell George if he wants to train off.

[2163] And then Eddie told him like, dude, seriously, you got to see this guy kick.

[2164] And I'm like, this sounds so stupid.

[2165] Like, no one's going to believe me. And so then George showed up.

[2166] So I was hoping, you know, when George showed up, like that he wasn't like, okay, come on, show me. You know, this is stupid.

[2167] Why am I wasting my dime?

[2168] He was focused.

[2169] Well, once I kicked the bag once.

[2170] And then he went, oh, shit.

[2171] Like, this is real.

[2172] And then you could see, like, he got this.

[2173] Like, I'm actually going to get something out of this, as opposed to, like, I'm just being nice to Joe because we're friends, and I'm going to go humor him, and, you know, he's going to throw some pussy -ass kicks.

[2174] Yeah, right.

[2175] But when he saw me kick a bag, you know, when you kick a 200 -pound bag and it goes flying.

[2176] And then it puts it in your head, you go, oh, I get it.

[2177] I get it now.

[2178] But it was his open -minded.

[2179] was so impressive because I wouldn't have listened to me I would have been like bitch get the fuck out of here like George is going to give you advice on your job exactly you know what I mean exactly but you know if you have an open mind but I when I did that TV show where I was learning to fight I trained with George and we'd use that on the show and I was terrible like I mean I literally was trying to take doing taekwondo growing up and add kind of boxing my head like I'm fucking horrible and I'd never wrestle day in my life If I was doing jiu -jitsu like 10 times a week for whatever number of months, never.

[2180] And that will forever, people will just put that on and go, oh, fuck, this guy's terrible.

[2181] This guy's, and it is bad.

[2182] But, I mean, what the fuck?

[2183] You're doing a TV show about taking some guy who wears eye makeup and trying to teach him to fight.

[2184] He happens to be there with George.

[2185] Of course, he's terrible, you know?

[2186] Yeah.

[2187] Well, that's a beautiful thing about martial arts or any difficult endeavor is that you start off.

[2188] Everybody starts off.

[2189] They suck.

[2190] If you don't have those techniques, you don't know what you're doing, you're not going.

[2191] to be good.

[2192] And then as you train, you get better.

[2193] And when you get better, it's like you go down a path.

[2194] And then you can stop and pause and look back and go, look where I started.

[2195] I started way back there.

[2196] And now here I am.

[2197] I'm getting better.

[2198] And then you turn around, you go, but look how far I got to go.

[2199] And that's exciting.

[2200] Yeah, well, that's the beautiful thing about martial arts is that there are so many levels.

[2201] And when we're seeing in mixed martial arts is like the jujitsu is still at a fairly low level.

[2202] I think the jiu -jitsu is still like purple belt level at even like a high level.

[2203] It's not like Marcelo Garcia, like high level black belt.

[2204] The striking is still at a fairly low level.

[2205] We're not saying Ernesto Hoost yet.

[2206] We're not seeing these like ridiculously technical, absolutely perfect executions of striking technique.

[2207] We're getting closer.

[2208] We're getting closer with the jujitsu.

[2209] We're getting closer with the striking.

[2210] But there's room to grow.

[2211] And that's one of the reasons why we're seeing new techniques now.

[2212] Like how many people are throwing wheel kicks now?

[2213] There was no wheel kicks up until Terry Edom fought Edson Barbosa.

[2214] But you know, Well, there is a, like, this has been seen before.

[2215] Like when Tony Hawk did the four things.

[2216] Right, right, right, right.

[2217] Within a year, 10 guys could do it and did it in training.

[2218] The quad in figure skating, nobody could do it.

[2219] Now, fucking college level figure skaters do the quad.

[2220] Four minute mile.

[2221] Yeah, yeah.

[2222] When it happens once, suddenly it's now real humans do this.

[2223] Just because, I mean, just because that guy did it, not every guy thinks he can do it.

[2224] But some guys think they can do it.

[2225] Yeah, it's an amazing thing to watch the actual growth.

[2226] I love it.

[2227] I'm so fascinated by it.

[2228] Me too, man. It's such a cool aspect of martial arts to be there while this is all going down and see this thing evolving and getting better.

[2229] Front kicks to the face now.

[2230] Same thing.

[2231] All of a sudden, there's the quad and figures came there all doing.

[2232] Front kick's in play for almost every good striker now.

[2233] That's in play for real.

[2234] We're also seeing a lot of that sideways karate dance like Ryan Jimo does.

[2235] and Gunner Nelson does, and Liotto does.

[2236] That sideways karate stance is a totally different thing.

[2237] Some guys you see are using it.

[2238] They grew up using it.

[2239] And for a right -handed guy, whenever they switch the stance and the right foot in the front is when you're going to see it.

[2240] You know what I mean?

[2241] It's suddenly not as camouflaged anymore.

[2242] Not only a guy's using it, but it's like, oh, shit, he's in that stance.

[2243] I better watch it for the side.

[2244] Well, you see a lot of front leg kicks off the dominant stance, the dominant leg.

[2245] Yeah, there's not a lot of.

[2246] of guys who develop that powerful front leg left sidekick they develop it off the right leg do you remember when uh chris clements did a did a spinning thing on that i broke that down yeah yeah the big question people had was how did he know to do that and when you look at it you see wonder boy and he turned sideways and chris and i froze it and said look in here there this is a moment Chris grew up doing taekwondo chris is a tradition martial as well so he knows when this right light comes forward and the stance is distributed this way either a sidekick is coming or a hook kick is coming Or a round kick, front leg round kick.

[2247] And the hip was flared enough that he was probably, you didn't, it was, the round kick wasn't as in play because of the position of how far a shoulder or hip was.

[2248] So then we freeze it and say, that's what he knows.

[2249] He knows from a lifetime of that, that both of those are in play.

[2250] Now, let's watch.

[2251] He throws the sidekick and go, freeze.

[2252] Now, Chris in his mind would know if this still happens, the next option, since he's just giving me a sidekick, his point is hoping to drop my hands and hook kicked me in the head.

[2253] When he saw that happen, there was a little flare of the hip, and his brain goes, oh yeah that's coming and then he timed it on the hook kick but it was his ability to kind of see the future you know what I mean like he could see and we predict the future all the time when you go to open a door handle the reason if it was really hot or if it was spongy that you'd be surprised is because your brain was predicting what a door handle would feel like yeah and that's what you were talking about early when it comes to pattern recognition that that's a big thing with pattern recognition yeah it is yeah and it's definitely what guys are playing with like Do you know Adam Zuchek?

[2254] He trains Sarah Kaufman, but he's also kind of a secret weapon for Greg Jackson.

[2255] He's up in Victoria, B .C., and he sends guys up there to do certain things.

[2256] He's very talented.

[2257] And we were talking about after Sarah's fight, Kaufman's fight, her last one in Quebec City, she was throwing a lot of off -tempo things, which he taught her because she's a dancer, right?

[2258] So he can work footwork off -time and different rhythms with her.

[2259] But he was also talking about pattern recognition, and how him and Greg Jackson, One of the things they're on heavy is training you to expect certain patterns, chunking those patterns that your brain anticipates and then giving you a surprise.

[2260] And that's on the front end of some of their thinking right now.

[2261] So fast thing.

[2262] Fuck, yeah, man. And what's so cool is when you have that many great minds doing it, now you've got one of these guys thinking that, but you got Duane over here fucking thinking this.

[2263] You got Matthews over there, and there's all these different guys in that.

[2264] Duke Rufus is in Wisconsin and he's looking at it and trying to break it down.

[2265] and put them against each other, and the lessons that we learn there, everybody's going to go back in their labs and prepare for the next one.

[2266] Yeah, amazing stuff.

[2267] Dude, we're out of time.

[2268] But this is a lot of fun.

[2269] Thank you, Robin.

[2270] A lot of fun, man. Really thank you for having me. It's a real thrill.

[2271] And thanks for digging my stuff.

[2272] Hey, I appreciate that you're doing it.

[2273] I really appreciate you doing the podcast, too.

[2274] And we've got to do this again, man. How often are you in L .A.?

[2275] My wife's working here right now, so I'm visiting a little bit.

[2276] She's in theater.

[2277] So not all that often a couple times a year, but I love to.

[2278] I'll come back.

[2279] I'll bring some beer.

[2280] We'll do it again.

[2281] we'll do it again for sure follow him robin black m m a on twitter and where can people see the videos yeah check out fight network uh fight network dot com we got some stuff but fight network is a 24 hour television station it's in canada and now in new york new jersey connecticut texas as on roku and you can call up any cable provider and say i want fight network and and it's it's a 24 hour fight channel and that's where i'm out beautiful all right and thanks to our sponsor thanks to legal zoom go to legalzoom entering the code word rogan in the referral box at checkout to save yourself some cash thanks also to nature box go to naturebox .com slash rogan that's naturebox .com slash rogan and get 50 % off your month's first box thanks also to on it .com go to on nit use the code word rogan and save 10 % off any and all supplements all right we'll be back in about 20 minutes with scrupious pip much love.

[2282] See ya.

[2283] Take care.

[2284] Big kiss.