Nuanced. - 173. Aiemann Zahabi: Is Justin Trudeau Leading Canada Down the Wrong Path?

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

UFC Fighter Aiemann Zahabi slams Justin Trudeau’s leadership, discusses rising food prices, and breaks down the impact of the carbon tax. Aiemann Zahabi also shares why he backs Pierre Poilievre for Canada’s next election and gives an inside look at his upcoming fight at UFC Edmonton with host Aaron Pete.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron P. I'm a huge fan of the UFC. I think their fighters are inspirational. I've spoken to this guest before, where we explore philosophy and fighting. Today we will be discussing politics, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Pierre Pallièv, the Carbon Tax, and his upcoming fight in Edmonton, Alberta against Pedro Munoz. My guest today is Aymond Zahabin.

Mr. Zahabi, it is so good to have you back. It's been too long. How are you doing? Things are great. I'm excited. I got a big fight coming up. Great to talk to you always before the fights. Amazing.

I wanted to start this off in a little bit of a different direction. I've seen you on Twitter. You've got some opinions. So I actually wanted to start this off with more of a political take because we've learned a lot about your philosophy and other interviews. And I find that really interesting. Would you mind telling me how your philosophy informs your political perspective? I mean, you know, for me, it's like always trying to do right by as many people as possible

for sure. And, you know, recently things have been taking a dive in North America, especially in Canada. I feel like the standard of living is falling for a lot of people. And I think it has a lot to do with politics and decisions that people are making up there in Ottawa. So, yeah, I've been trying to get involved a little bit on Twitter, give my opinion, because Canada known to be a great country with great people, and a lot of things have changed. Fair to say that MMA and sports in general teach you discipline and perhaps leadership skills. And I'm just curious, when you as a leader, somebody who teaches other people, who tries to inspire other people, when you see our leadership in politics, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, if you're talking specifically about Canada, the leadership is terrible right now. I feel like it's really going in the wrong direction. You know, I've never really looked into, like, all the foreign investment that they do, but there's a girl on Twitter. I can send you a link of one of her things that she posts, but she posted a thread of all the money that Canada is sending to all these different countries. And a lot of it is, like, just ridiculous stuff, you know, like 50 million for gender studies in this country for feminine products.

And then it's like 100 million to this country for a bunch of nonsense studies that don't improve that country's ability to for families to either generate income or to have a higher standard of living. It's a lot of this like hush-fosh stuff that we have we do in the West because we have such a high living standard. When you're talking about African countries, you're giving them millions of dollars to do to not improve their life. Like why don't you just give them $60 million to build wells or teach them how to produce better. more agriculture and things like that but they're wasting all our tax dollars for things that make no sense that don't improve the standard of living over there while the standard of living in Canada is going down the drain so there's like this whole weird thing about yeah they need to raise taxes uh so that give more money our tax dollars to other countries that is you know that becomes

inefficient tax spending and then you know even here our infrastructure is falling apart everything is falling apart so it's kind of a bit of a nightmare for me now in terms of leadership of this country when when you see somebody talking say it's prime minister trudeau like what what is running through your mind in terms of like the approach do you think someone like yourself could go into that world like i just see politicians in such their own sort of category that there's rules they think they need to follow like practices of like don't tell the truth on something if it's not popular kind of skirt the question and like i've i've had the opportunity to interview really interesting people like Vashi Capellos who interviews politicians all the time and they just

view it as normal to like not get an answer to a question and I just like the same rules don't apply in this conversation. I wouldn't ask you a question and then you completely like avoid the the answer intentionally and so I just I think about that and the role that normal citizens play and then we have these like different rules for politicians and I'm just curious do you see that same kind of challenge where We can't even get real honest answers. Even if we agree, disagree, it's like we're not even getting real answers to some of these questions. It's a weird thing how they can sidestep these questions. It's super weird, especially Christian Freeland.

She's the worst. I never heard someone answer her questions so horribly. She always starts by, well, first, I'd like to say, and then she goes on this tangent of thanking or mentioning things that have nothing to do with the question. And by the end of it, she never even answers the question. It's so weird that we don't ever expect them to answer the question. That's something that I've learned, like now following politics. I haven't been following politics for very long. But I find that's so weird that they have the opportunity to never answer a question directly.

Like to get away with not answering anything, it's super weird. And another thing is, I don't think I can run for politics. I'm sure, like, there's a whole, a lot of things you have to learn. I'm just stating my opinion based on, like, you know, how I would run my life or how I would run a business. I feel like, you know, there's that one of the Shark Tank coaches, Shark Tech investors, What's his name? Kevin O'Leary talks about how, you know, we have such a great country with such great resources, but we're managed by idiots. You know, he said that quote a million times in a bunch of different interviews. It's kind of like how it feels now. It's like we have all these natural resources. We have like all these European countries or technically our allies coming here asking us for natural gas. We can make money. They can receive natural gas instead of going to like, you know, Russia for a natural gas or a different country that is not our allies. So instead of helping all these. european countries out he decides no we're not going to do it and instead of for like i just find it weird this whole this whole thing that they have they're obsessed with climate change in canada and that we need to

reduce our our uh our carbon tax uh imprint or whatever but it makes no sense because if you calculate all the trees we have we're probably carbon neutral or negative like we're fine we're already doing enough i feel like we're already doing enough and instead of like sending a money out to all these different things that are so inefficient. Why don't they just invest in cleaning the tar sands, getting the oil out of the ground, cleaner and safer and better and more efficient? Why don't they invest in R&D or better things?

It's just like it's all about, this government is all about inefficiency and I'm ready for a new government to step in. I'm very big on Pierre Pollyev. I'm really hoping he's the real deal and his promise for change and things like that. It's true, you know. I want to ask, before we get to P.S.

about the carbon tax. What are your thoughts on that? It doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't make any sense to me that it's, they say it's always like eight out of ten families benefit. It's such a weird thing that they keep repeating. But then the guy who's supposed to do the independent check comes out and says that it's not going to be true.

That's not going to be true until 2013. So they've been lying to us that has been better for eight out of ten families. But even in the official report, it's not beneficial now and it won't be beneficial until 2031 makes no sense and another thing that doesn't make sense is why would you take money from us to give us more money back

just let us keep the money you know what I mean there are already so many people in Canada going to all these places to supplement their food at home people are skipping meals people can't afford groceries I have a small business

I transport groceries I transport foods I have like a brokerage, the sales of fruits and vegetables are down. Food is so expensive. I don't know if you go to the grocery store. I know you're engaged now, you have a house, you're going to the grocery store. The price of fruits and vegetables is going up. It's not going down.

The price of meat is going up. It's not getting any cheaper to buy food. It's getting more expensive. And then you add the carbon tax and these trucks have to pay diesel. Luckily recently, the price of diesel has gone down. That's because of the general oil market, the price of oil has gone down. But not because of the carbon tax. Carbon tax is a nightmare and he wants to increase it by 61 cents.

Doesn't make sense because the people who transport the food are going to charge more for transport because their fuel costs will go up. Which is then they're going to end up charging more for the fruits and vegetables and other foods. So I just feel like the solutions to their problems is to raise taxes. But the problem with raising taxes is the people who make the most money, have the best tax accountants, have the best tax lawyers. and they find a way to either get their money out or to put their money in things that won't get taxed. So I don't think the solution is to raise taxes. What seems to be working the best is the countries

who have the simplest tax forms end up collecting the most amount of tax, not the least amount of tax. And even this whole thing with the new capital gains, they want to increase capital gains. Other countries have done it. I think it was either Sweden or Norway did it. and they actually collected less money in taxes

because before the rule was applied, people sold their investments and got the money out and money drained outside the country. And people invested in countries that are more tax-efficient. So the smart money moves. You know what I mean? So you're only going to end up taxing the poor and middle class more than you are going to tax the rich.

The rich have the freedom to move their money and they have the best teams to move their money. So it's kind of like it's backwards. How do you digest Justin Trudeau's argument that we do need to put challenges or kind of encourage people to move away from carbon. And this is one of the tools. I think it accounts like for like 14% of the plan to move us in the right direction, that we need something and that we need to set an example for other countries.

We can't go to China. We can't go to India. We can't convince them to do something if we're not willing to do it ourselves. And this is just one of the tools to do that. How do you post? Like is that a good argument? Is that about? Or what are your thoughts?

All right. I understand his point makes sense in the general scheme of things. But the way to make it happen is not by taxing us more. If you want to generate more income, you have to find a way to make our country more efficient and to make our country have more exports and imports. And when people come to ask us to sell them things, we shouldn't say no. We should say yes. And there's got to be a way for them to make it cleaner to get natural gas.

gas out of the ground to make getting oil out of the ground cleaner. It doesn't make sense that oil is the oil is not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere for the next 20, 30, 50 years, man. We're still going to be super dependent on oil. We're still going to be super dependent on natural gas. And one of the solutions could be to make, you know, okay, let's push hybrid cars, hybrid cars, right? They want to push hybrid cards more than gasoline cars.

Let's make regular cars more efficient on gas, right? So they take less gas to go. Okay, here's another point. Why don't we increase our metro systems? Like, we don't have enough metro. We don't have enough public transport. It's not efficient enough. You know, why don't we have a good subway system like New York and Montreal?

We don't have a good subway system like that in Toronto. You know, there's so many different solutions than just taxes. Because the money we're doing with the carbon tax, I want to know where it's going. You know, because the whole thing, even the thing, let's say, with Jasper, right? Like, they ignored some of the things that people were suggesting for them to do. to clear out some of that dead wood and all that different things. They didn't do so many things. Like, why didn't they use the cover tax money to improve the chances of chasper not being burnt to the ground?

I don't know. It's weird. It's just weird. It's just very inefficient. And they also promised the liberals that they'll be the most transparent government. We haven't experienced that at all. There's nothing transparent about them. Every time there's a problem, they prolong.

They shut down government. It's super weird. So I don't know. Yeah, we have Lytton that's not too far. away from us and the whole city burnt down and still they're working on trying to build houses and that was that was in like 2021 it's been like three years and we haven't made progress and so we keep talking about becoming more climate resilient and the communities that are kind of facing these challenges the worst are still struggling to address the issues that they faced previously

but if you were to meet Justin Trudeau it sounds like he's going to be running again he's put his foot down what would you have to say to him because i feel like their your philosophy your approach your your leadership abilities like what what would you have to say to the man he's got to listen to the people like i feel like people are a lot more outspoken against his government as of recently and a lot more people are lining up for food banks than ever before there's a lot more junkies uh in all the different cities a lot more homeless than everybody else And it's, it's okay to change your, my, my, what is what I would tell them? It's okay to change your policies if you got them wrong.

Like if you, because I feel like Justin Trudeau's intentions are good. Like he wants, he has good intentions, but the results and his policies don't match up. You know what I mean? Like what he wants to accomplish and what has been accomplished don't match up. And it's actually better to go back and change than to push the same wrong policies to keep going down. that road. It would garner a lot more respect if you turn things around and I tried new policies that can help clean up Canada. Do you think that's a mistake that politicians make? There's like an old adage that you can never apologize. You can never take responsibility. And personally,

I think that's incorrect. I'm not a pollster. I don't know what the polls tell them. But I, man, I would love for Justin Trudeau to sit down, look in a camera and own every mistake. he thinks he made by his own metrics, by his own standards, and just own it and say, but I'm going to fix it. And here's my plan to address these mistakes. But look at all the other things I've done. Let's keep on. That would be inspiring to me, for a leader to just own their mistakes for a change.

Yeah, definitely. I would respect them way more. And I feel like it would change the people's public opinion about it. Because right now, the vast majority people can't stand it. You know, that's the truth. You know, he's not doing great in the polls. And I think that if he was someone who can own the mistakes and have the right solutions to turn this country around, people would fall in love with them all over again. Because when he came in to everyone, even me, I was, I voted liberal my whole life.

My whole life I voted liberal. This is going to be the first, this next, whenever the next election is, I'm going to conservative. Wow. Yeah, yeah, my whole life, man, my mom and dad voted liberal the whole lives. You know, my parents immigrated here from Lebanon war toward country. and even my mom she tells people I'm Canadian you know like Canada saved her life

basically right so that's why I tell people all the time I'm Canadian yeah I have Lebanese ethnicity but I'm Canadian 100% Canadian but now I've got to go with conservatives because I feel like the liberals have kind of lost their way

and their policies and things like that but if you would own up to it and corrected course I think he would get a lot more support you have faith the population to accept that like like just i i think you and i agree but do you think like if you were recommending him do you think that canadians as a whole could hear him own his mistakes and not want him to immediately resign i'm a very forgiving guy but i don't know how you know how

you know about the rest of the population but canadians are sweethearts i i mean if you travel on the world you'll never meet nicer people than canadian so uh yeah i feel like there's a good chance but uh it's hard to deny uh pierre pauliev right now he's a lot more straight forward he answers questions pretty much directly you know he's much more open to uh to voice his opinion and and say what he believes in and i really like the common sense approach even him he's talking about simplifying taxes you know doing a general reform on taxes and i really hope that uh you know he he follows through on what he says okay i got roasted the last time that i talked about pierre because i wasn't clear i'm very excited about his

him as well. He seems very interesting. I have. I think the momentum has hit a point now where we need to start to challenge him to take a little bit more responsibility as well because he's coasting on the fact that everybody hates Justin Trudeau, but I think it's fair now to start to ask some questions. I don't believe Pierre has done a tough interview yet. I've watched his Jordan Peterson interview. I've watched some of the interview. I watched him eat an apple and destroy a reporter. That was hilarious. That wasn't a real interview. That guy knew nothing. Like, that's not a really tough interview. Vashe Capellos, who hosts PowerPlay, says she's invited him on. She invites him on all the time, doesn't respond, won't confirm an interview. I don't think he's done a

tough interview yet, where they actually go into things. And I think he is way better at avoiding tough questions. And he still has all of those hallmarks of a good politician where he's not really answering if he's going to bring the budget down if he's going to balance it there are going to have to be actual programs that are cut which ones are those they don't want to touch that topic yet and i think they have a fair argument it's not their job they're the opposition right now but i think going back to this idea of leadership there's no rule that says they can't start to lay out their platform now they're just doing what strategy tells them best and not necessarily what canadians i think deserve what are your thoughts on that well he said in one interview

it's not going to cut it's not about cutting programs it's about cutting waste like i was telling you we send so much money abroad on things that don't make any sense like there was a there was a government funded study for 280 000 about uh the study of um archaeology in a video game but why why does the government have to fund 280 000 for a study on archaeology inside a video game no sense there's a lot of these things i'm going to send you that that that thread about all these millions upon millions of dollars wasted on all these studies in the in the country and abroad if you stop those things that are so inefficient that don't help us and don't help actually help the other countries okay then we won't need to cut any programs because we'll just use that money

and also i'm purely i've said that he wants to sell natural gas he wants to sell natural resources You know, he wants to make Canada a more productive country and he's going to turn Canada into a business. He also talked about hiring not hiring, but gathering business people to make a team to help perform the taxes to make them more efficient and for strategies on how Canada can generate more income

because we really need to treat Canada as a business. That's what the United States does. Like we should be performing so much better than we are as a country. Maybe more like a business, but like probably not just like a business though, right? because a business would never take care of like poor people.

They would just fire. No, no, for sure. More like a business. Yeah, definitely. Not just a business. But even then, like, if you really have a successful business, no one on your team hurts.

Think about it. A real business leader, everyone the team is happy to work for him. Look at Elon Musk. You think of the guys on the line don't like him. He used to work on the line. He was talking about it day the day on Twitter.

He knows everyone's name that's on the line in his factories. You know what I mean? That's a real leader. That's a real businessman. That's a person who takes care of his people from the bottom to the top. Not only it takes about the top, you know, I just feel like, yes, there are people who are rich from business but aren't good businessmen, but they've found a way to squeeze people. But then there are as genuine businessmen who know how to keep a good world culture at the same time, right?

So there's always balance in life. There's always going to be balanced. But Canada should be a powerhouse player, and it doesn't make it sense that we're not. When you see Pierre deuce pull some of the stunts that he's done, how do you process that? because he's calling people wacko and he does some charactery things that maybe aren't prime ministerial that aren't maybe what you expect from the prime minister of Canada or the future prime minister of Canada. He does some interesting things.

I respect it, man. I even like, let's say, for example, when he went to go interview that business owner about Bitcoin. Right? There's a guy who owns a showarmar shop and he was talking about how he invested in Bitcoin and how Bitcoin went up and then his family benefited from that and how it's hard money. And then Pierre Polyev went and interviewed him and found an interesting and figured out what Bitcoin was and then started pushing Bitcoin. And then Bitcoin tanked a little bit.

And then, you know, the Prime Minister Trudeau was talking bad about him. Oh, Bitcoin this better. Look at Bitcoin now. Look at Bitcoin. Now some of the smartest, richest people on earth are buying Bitcoin hand over fist. Just because it dipped a little bit, Trudeau started throwing Pierre Plavillev onto the bus. but Pierre Poliaf took went out and took a risk

and he went on and he tried to understand what Bitcoin was so think about it look at Black Rock Black Rock now how much Bitcoin are they buying how many billions of dollars are they spending on that

how micro strategy how many billions of dollars are they spending on crypto you got to think about it I don't mind the way he talks I feel like it just makes it more relatable interesting

this has been fascinating to kind of cover these topics any reflections on the upcoming U.S. election yeah for sure i'm hoping trump wins if trump wins it's going to be much better for the west than uh it's going to be for north america than the ferris wins how do you come to that conclusion

like i told you he's all about business and he didn't start any wars when he was president and uh you know there's a lot of turmoil in the middle east now with gaza and lebanon and uh things going on and uh we're hoping that he could strike a deal with a pen instead of with a gun and uh you know he said it many times that that he wants the bloodshed to end and that's what we want you know we want the bloodshed to end it makes no sense how he had the abraham accords and then all of a sudden under biden and harris things fall apart it doesn't make any sense i'm really hoping

that he brings peace back through business you know we need someone who's more business oriented who get some of these richest most powerful people in a room together and strike a deal with a pet are you surprised that you're not more supportive of kamala like she seems more middle grounded calmer like do you see at least maybe the caricature of who she is seems like the argument against Biden was that he was too old and i i think that played out exactly how we all agreed but then they bring you the other person yeah undeniable he resigned but now we have kamala and more just neutral flavor not dramatic in any way like how do you how do you come to that conclusion that he's the better choice she called trump hitler after he's been

people they've been they tried to assassinate him two times she still calls him hitler makes no sense she wants him dead i don't understand like she wants people to be motivated to kill this guy it doesn't make any sense another thing is she's in power now she's not making any of the changes we want to see she says oh when you elect me i'll do this but you're already there it doesn't make any sense everything that's happening now is under your feet it's all being done while you're in power so I wouldn't expect anything to change I only expect things to get worse

even her it's all about taxing more it makes no sense to tax more it doesn't make any sense to tax more it should be about efficiency efficiency is really the answer and Trump is all about cutting taxes even say for the common person if you work overtime hours it shouldn't be taxed

for senior citizens your checks your monthly checks that you receive you shouldn't be taxed Yeah, how would that not better the standard of living for the average person? I think we've lost a plot where a lot of the left-leaning parties, there's kind of like destroying the middle class and weakening the middle class and expanding the poor and having more people depend on government subsidies and all these different government programs instead of finding a way, how can we raise the level of education of more people

and get more people into middle class and have more better paying jobs for a vast majority of our population instead of getting everyone addicted to programs. It's a weird thing. It's like, I don't know the answer either. I don't know the final answer. Nobody knows the answer.

That's why it's like, even let's say like if I had it was in a room with Trudeau, I don't know what the final answer is. But what I would tell him is, if we look around Canada, things are going, we're getting worse. Maybe we should change some of the policies to improve. And it's okay to change them.

If you try something, You know, we're happy to try it. It didn't work. Okay, let's change it. You're still in power. He's still got another year and a half for whatever, how long he's got left. If he can turn it around in the next year, you know what I mean? He's winning the election. Do you feel like maybe they are turning? This is an argument I've heard as well, and it's that they are turning it around. We're seeing mortgage rates continue to drop. We're seeing the interest rates starting to come down. Things are cooling off for both the U.S. and Canada. it's just not maybe fast enough or it's it the numbers are moving in a direction that i think we'd agree is not getting worse it's not the same because kind of the united states are not the same right now it's two different things one is yeah we're reducing interest rate okay it's a lot faster than everybody else but it's not a good sign because our labor market is weaker it we're our GDP per capita we're producing less than alabama doesn't make any sense we're

we're like the difference between how much a one worker in the United States produces about $60,000 in GDP per year per capita and a Canadian produces 44,000. There's a huge disparity. The disparity wasn't that big, not too long ago. It was a lot closer, right? So things are falling apart. Immigration is helping for sure, like bringing in a lot of people is keeping our GDP up instead of falling apart for sure. And I have no problem with immigrants. Obviously my parents came here and it saved our lives. So I have no problem with immigration. But my problem is more with how do we get the GDP per capita up? How can we improve our production, our ability to get natural resources out of the ground? How can we sell more? How can we improve public

transport? How can we do things that are real, that elevate even the poorest into middle class? We've got to take the poor and move them up. And I'll take the middle class and move them down. That's kind of like where I'm at. Do you see why I wanted to talk to you about this? This is super interesting like who knew that we would be discussing GDP per capita and that you'd have such complicated thoughts hopefully i don't get into any trouble for my thoughts no and that's what i that's what i like about sean strickland um there's there's a lot to be desired i think he's quite the character but like the one thing is like it's important that we don't give seed all the ground to political analysts i think is like my big takeaway from what he does because you're speaking on behalf of

like your lived experience your family's lived like we I just watch all these shows where there's political pundits telling me what to think about the issue but it's like what do normal like I wouldn't say you're normal but like what do people real people actually just think from their understanding of what's going on in the world right now and seeing your comments just made me think like I appreciate that because that's a real lived person's experience you're not bringing what somebody told you to say or trying to fit within a narrative of like, NDP, conservative, or like, you're just coming to these conclusions based on what you're seeing. And I think that's something we forget to do sometimes.

You know, it's funny. I was talking to my doctor when I was getting checked up for my, because I have to always do like an exam before I take a fight and I'm fighting next week. So I had to see my doctor or whatever. And I was talking to him. And one thing that came to my mind is that, you know what's weird is that I find. So it's like, let's see the liberals are in power now right and the conservatives are called the opposition but what's weird is that they don't really do things together like i always when i was younger i always thought okay whoever's in power they always making deals with the opposites like the leader of the opposition you know so like they'd always find common ground so one person doesn't get too extreme like one party doesn't get

too extreme but it seems like the liberals want only their ideas to work in their way and the conservatives want their ideas to work in their way without any help of any other party like each party wants to do everything on their own and i feel like that's so weird because i thought the whole point of having the opposition was to like could like i bring some kind of like control or like some kind of like a leveling off of the other group instead of making each group extreme now you got two extremes fighting it fighting over something you know so like i find that super weird like imagine they work together and they found common ground and they'd be centrist like me you know i feel like the average canadian is more like in the middle of both concerns

conservative and liberal you know and it's weird that our policies aren't more even-handed i i don't know i don't understand why they're not more even-handed i thought that's what that's the whole point of having all these parties is so that they can keep a balance within each other i agree with you i guess it goes back to my original point though like justin trudeau did have to work with jake neat sing yeah pierre doesn't have to work with anybody and the energy that Pierre gives off is I don't want to work with any like he doesn't he gives that off

more to me than Justin Trudeau gives that to that energy to me yeah yeah I hear what you're saying yeah yeah yeah I hear what you're saying yeah but even then like I feel like okay MDP and the liberals are too much on the same side there's not much control there so it would be better

let's say like Pierpoli have like rating them in enough that it would be a lot more centrist I feel like now you got two guys on the left side just pushing things towards you can call somebody a wacko and then say let's meet and try and find a middle ground yeah that's not good either yeah for sure that's not good either that's not good yeah I agree I agree that's not good maybe it's not the best thing I don't know that's just what I think about with these types of issues is it's so challenging but it's so interesting to get your

perspective because again like I love that you have this deep thought through philosophy on how to live a good life because then that influences how you think about who you want to lead your country, which is really important decision that we're going to be able to make in potentially a couple of months. Yeah, I don't know if they're going to end up being able to do it in a couple of months. I think they're going to, it's going to take the whole year. There's no way. I don't see how the vote of confidence is going to go against the Chudor, as long as he got

the coalition going. But it gives him enough time to try to figure things out. He's got to figure it out. He's got to turn the ship around because right now we're going down. Agreed. I hope we start to sort this out. I hope we have that coming together, as you. were kind of describing because I think that's important. But you have a fight coming up,

my friend, and I'm super excited. It's always an honor to watch you fight. It's been a while since we've seen you perform. How are you feeling, heading up to this? What are your, what are your takes? I feel amazing, man. Honestly, it's the best I've ever felt. I've never had such a great training camp. I know a lot of guys say that. But this one, it really was. And my brother really took it to the next level. And I had a lot of good training partners come in. So I really feel like I'm ready. How do you process between things are going well, you're on this trajectory, and things have worked so far, to not change, you see this with some people, I think we've talked about

this before, you see people start to go, I'm going to switch it up now, or I'm going to level up, and then they maybe don't do what, like, they're a wrestler, and then they start striking and they kind of forget what brought them to the dance. How do you make sure you balance that with like, you've got momentum now? Things are moving in the right direction, confidence I'm sure is rising. How do you balance between trying new things and sticking with what continues to work? Well, you know, it's also

depending on the opponent, right? So like we watch the tape and we try to figure out, okay, what can I add, what can I subtract from what I did the last time, what can we do? So a lot of that is based on what we see could be a problem for him and what could be a problem for me based on our stylistic matchup. And, you know,

just to hone in on what's been working and to add just a little bit something different, you know, so it's not easy to figure me out. So yes, there's going to be a slightly different approach for this fight, of course, because it's like the opposite of my last opponent. My last opponent was taller, longer reach and faster. This guy is going to be shorter, shorter reach, and maybe average speed, maybe not faster than me, maybe the same. So it's like a totally different type of problem. So new approach. And, you know, we had to obviously adapt the style to be able to put him out. Interesting. It's happening.

November 2nd. I'm super excited because you're finally back in Canada. How does that feel? It feels great. I love, like I said, I'm Canadian. I'm born and raised here. So I love to get the chance to fighting Canada from the Canadian crowd. You know, holding they all come out and support. I can't wait to put on a great performance to everyone in Canada. And I just, I just love being here. Absolutely. And then again, going back to like the style. I'm curious as to how you make sure that you keep the right mindset because that's something interesting you had mentioned previously was around. like oh is it three and like three going on that moving forward having the streak how do you keep that going how do you not connect yourself with those numbers how have you been processing that energy yeah so actually a friend of mine suggested I work with a mindset coach for this fight so I heard a

mindset coach we've been working for a couple of months now and the main one of the main things that we did was we threw away I don't I surrender the outcome like the outcome is not even the thought in my mind anymore like I try not to care about it at all and I just focused time like every day they work on getting one percent better and i judge myself every day in terms of like how well i did what i need to improve uh what i'm and i also to try to use a lot of gratitude what i'm looking at most for to in the day you know things like that and i'm just trying to improve and do everything with intent everything is with intent you know so i'm able to improve so i have

to criticize myself but obviously i don't want to be too overcritical but i have to always getting closer to perfection, even though perfection is unattainable, but I'm still working towards something, right? So every day I'm working towards improving my game, and I'm trying to make it 90% about me and only 10% about my opponent. As long as I'm playing my game, I should come out with the victory. Or at the very least, amazing performance, because the performance is worth more than winning and losing. As long as you look good, you win, whether or not the judges say so you are excellent at leading me into my next question i was going to ask one thing i've noticed that's unique in the interviews you've done to date is a lot of people have a lot more

questions about this opponent because perhaps it's more of uh there's more of a name known in pedro munoz how do you process that because it just i've seen a few of the clips i've seen a few of your interviews and people are like how are you preparing for him he's got this and it's like the opponent's just like again it's just statistics on a show sheet, it's just you're looking at a body in front of you, but the name almost comes with something. How do you make sure not to let too much of that in where it's like it's all of a sudden, like I think Izzy had that at one point in time. People were like, oh, it's this guy and like you're fighting this guy. Conner McGregor had that for a period. So you kind of get this connection

to the person rather than this is their fight style. This is how I'm preparing. How do you not let too much of that in? He's just a human being, man. He breathes. He bleeds. He bleeds. He sleeps you know he's breakable just like everybody else uh and it's all about strategy and game planning i'm at the point now i feel like they gave me the name because i belong there now with all these guys and i've made my place in the ufc you know i have my name in a few records too now so like i've cemented my place in ufc you can get my rookie card next step video game uh yeah so i feel like ufc is my house now i belong there just like everybody else like it's in the top 15 top 20 and I feel like there's no doubt in my skills.

I feel like the people who appreciate skills, they know how good I am. And that, you know, for me, I'm going to use him as a stepping stone now. What does that mean to you to be able to kind of cement that? That's great. You know, childhood dream. It's something I always wanted to do. And I'm really happy to have been able to accomplish it. And I know it took me longer than that people like.

I feel like we're always talking about my age. But I feel like the real story is that I never gave up on it. I sacrifice everything I had to sacrifice, and I lived out my dream, and I'm still here doing it, and I still have a lot of momentum behind my back to keep going and reach for that belt. So I feel like it's going to be a great story when I'm done, regardless of whatever happens by the time I retire. Even then, you know, I've set up my retirement, you know, like working with sports net

and things like that, and I feel like I'm making a good example for my children so that my daughters know that whatever they want to become, it's worth the sacrifice. It doesn't worry about the timeline so much. Just consistency over time, you can achieve what you want. But without consistency over time, you can give up on anything. And I think, like, another cool piece about you is, like, this humility that you've brought each time. And your brother and you making sure that you keep the humility and the desire to just focus on constant improvement. And I think that's a huge takeaway because we all focus on the end goal.

and a lot of the end goal we end up moving the goal post anyways when when I started this my goal was to hit 100 episodes then you flow by that and it's the next goal so like it's even focusing too much on a goal can really you can miss out on the opportunity

to improve each day which I think is really inspiring of something you've definitely ingrained in me through these conversations oh I'm happy I've done that man that's great to hear yeah for me and my brother really the philosophy is if you've done everything you can to prepare the outcome doesn't matter just do everything you can to be ready you know

sometimes it's lady luck gets in the way you know what i mean sometimes it happens there's a million ways to win and a million ways to lose but uh your hard work is yours forever right all the hard work and all the sacrifice everything you do as long as you've prepared to your best you get to keep those qualities in those aspects that you've added to your life and uh you'll always be able to be successful in some way you know like i really feel like i want like uh I'm already a winner, you know, and regardless of the outcome of the next fight or the fight after that or whatever, I feel like a winner already, and then I just got to keep the ball going. Amazing. And there's doors flying open for you. I love seeing you on Sportsnet. Would you mind showing this growth in the new world? Yeah, yeah, of course. I can't wait to keep growing in that kind of feel like I'm doing my YouTube channel also to just keep practicing, getting used to being in front of the camera and things like that.

and having a chance to go on sports and interview the fighters. I found that it's such a nice, easy life. It's so much nicer to make a mistake and I get punched in the face. It's very, very nice. The producers were very kind to me. So I'm hoping to expand on that and to do more of that. And also, like, just blow up my

YouTube channel as well. And just like, yeah, I've got my hands in a few different pots, but fighting is number one. Fighting is above all else since I retire. And it's hard for me to, like, do more in terms of like social media and stuff. Even like now, like I was expecting to do like weekly videos for the training camp and this or that.

But you know what? The hard work was more important than making videos, right? So anyways, once fighting is done, I'll be able to be more on social media for sure. And you're like to me a great person for that because I think there's oftentimes like two types of people who go into that world. One, they want their face out there more. And then there's the person who like respects the game, understands the work that people. are putting in and want to highlight that. That's one thing I really love about Ariel is like he's very good at trying to highlight

the person and give them the opportunity to share who they are. Like the cooking with Volk was one of my favorite episodes because you really just gave somebody a platform to share who they were. And I think that's like, that's a skill set in and of itself. And it's something you show during the interviews I watched you do was this willingness to kind of uplift them and give them the opportunity to shine. And that's what makes people fall in love. I think with the interviewer a lot of times is,

that they're doing that for so many different people yeah exactly you know i think that's beautiful i love all that kind of stuff for sure when can we expect another video to come out and how can people connect with your youtube channel oh i mean emma's a hobby official on youtube uh we'll have a few videos coming out next week uh for like uh for fight week which is going to be interesting you know just a couple of new uh inside videos that i'm going to try to get like one of my friends to film uh throughout the fight week and i have another person edit it for me so i'm not going to be doing any of that stuff okay guys so you don't think i'm distracted it's actually going to be my friends that are going to be doing it releasing the footage for me

but uh yeah check me out on youtube and check me on instagram fantastic there's one last thing we have to accomplish i have been on a three-day fast i'm so hungry yeah i don't want i don't want you coming out of me you raised your fist again last time we did an interview i was terrified yeah so i protected myself i've brought some food i'll be honest I tried to do a 10K run the other day on the three-day fast, and I was very dizzy. That was a bad idea. I drank a lot of... I find I'm much thirstier.

I'm more thirsty, and thirstier doing this than I think I'd normally... I consumed much more water than I would normally consume as a consequence of this. Yeah, I mean, it's normal because you're going to be sweating all day, especially if you try to do 10 kilometer running, you're dehydrated like crazy. And when you have... When you don't have a lot of food, you're not getting as many... electrolytes, right? So when you're going to need to rehydrate it's more often and plus you want to keep yourself full. You don't want to feel hungry. So you can also put like when you're doing a three-day fast, you could put a lemon in some water and you could put some salt in there just to keep

your head from getting too dizzy and things like that. But it's a huge accomplishment to be able to do that man. So congratulations. Very proud of you this time we're out. Thanks man. I disappointed you the last time. I did two days, but I didn't do the three days and I was a huge disappointment. And then you stopped talking to me. You started ignoring me. You didn't remember. I get it. I get it. I get it. So now I get to go enjoy my Tim Horton's turkey bacon sandwich as an ease in back to this. But you are so inspirational, my man. Like I appreciate always the opportunity to speak with you. I'll be rooting for you coming up.

I'm so happy to see you perform again. It's just so cool to be able to speak to you and then go watch. I'm a nerd like that. I think it's just so surreal to watch you go perform after chatting with you. Thank you. Cudos to you. I'm so happy to see you going into different worlds, sports net, doing your live shows. and I've had so much feedback from people I know being like it's so cool you get to interview him like it's so cool that he's performing out in like in Vancouver or now it's going to be Edmonton like it's just cool to uplift another Canadian and to be able to participate in all of this so thank you a million times for being willing to do this oh thank you man I love being on your show you're a great interviewer and I mean like me for me like you I love helping Canadians out and I think that's a huge thing that's that's been missing lately in Canada and can't Canadians should support Canadians and we should have to be

each other's back and we should really pull this country together and and get into what it used to be getting back to its glory days agreed thank you so much best of luck to you and i can't wait to watch you perform thank you buddy