The Joe Rogan Experience - #607 - Joe Schilling

Episode Date: February 3, 2015

Joe Schilling is an American Muay Thai kickboxer who competes in the super middleweight and light heavyweight divisions. Joe's upcoming fight is February 6th at Glory 19 on Spike TV.

All right, with me today, this Friday night, you can catch him live on Spike TV, Glory 19, right? It's number 19? Yes, sir. Stitch him up, Joe Schilling, live on Spike TV. Glory 19, right? It's number 19? Yes, sir. Stitch him up, Joe Schilling, live from Los Angeles. Welcome aboard, brother. Pull that sucker right up to your face. Don't be shy.

You're drinking distilled water, huh? That's to cut weight? Is that what that is? Yes, sir. How much do you cut? I try to cut like 12 pounds of water, maybe a little less, but the process. It's like five gallons of water over three days. Is there like a science to this or is this like, does everybody do the same thing or

like, it seems like a lot of people have different methods on how to do this. Yeah, a lot of people have different methods. I read about it online probably five years ago from some wrestler and we tried it and it worked really well for me. So I just keep the same way, but I'll do two gallons of water. Like my weigh-ins on Thursday, so I started on'll do two gallons of water. My weigh-in's on Thursday, so I start it on Sunday. Two gallons of distilled water on Sunday. Two gallons on Sunday, two gallons on Monday, one gallon Tuesday to Wednesday.

And then Wednesday for 24 hours, I won't drink any water, no salt, and it just kind of comes right off. So Wednesday, no water all the way through Thursday, no water. The weigh-in's are Thursday? Yeah. And because of the distilled water, because the distilled water all the way through Thursday, no water. The weigh-ins are Thursday. Yeah. And because of the distilled water, because the distilled water has no minerals in it, it's just pure water, it just flushes through your system? Is that the idea behind it?

Yeah, and it doesn't have any minerals, so your body doesn't hold on to it. And because it's flushing through your system, it pulls all the other minerals out with it. So the first two days, you're just peeing like crazy. You're sweating like crazy. You put on deodorant um you're just peeing like crazy you're sweating like crazy you put on deodorant you're still sweating like crazy your body feels like it's over flooded with water and uh that last 24 hour period it's still in that same cycle and you're you know the rest of the water just comes right out yeah see i would think that that would be not good for you yeah it's probably not distilled water it just seems like because i know my friend

aubrey he went on um this weird diet of distilled water like you thought like distilled water it just seems like because i know my friend aubrey he went on um this weird diet of distilled water like he thought like distilled water be pure and uh he started getting dizzy and shit i think you and he went and got himself checked out and they're like dude you're not any fucking minerals in your system yeah like you can't be doing that like it's definitely not a healthy thing it's not a you know i definitely don't advocate it for anything other than cutting weight what do you weigh in at uh 187 you weigh in at 187 you walk around somewhere around if i'm walking around like maybe six weeks ago i was probably like 210 212 you know if that's eating whatever i want you know drinking beer doing whatever i want yeah everybody's got their own

little ideas about what should be done as far as like how much weight to cut before you compete some guys think cut the minimum amount possible and then there's these extreme dudes that cut like 30 40 pounds yeah uh it really comes down to everybody and then also like your style of fighting some guys i think need to feel strong a lot bigger and stronger because maybe they're lacking or because they you know whatever reason they need to be bigger and stronger than the other guy but there's a hindrance you know i've cut too much to be bigger and stronger than the other guy. But there's a hindrance, you know. I've cut too much weight and overhydrated and learned lessons that way.

Where you, you know, I think when I fought Simon Marcus the second time, when I flew to Vegas, I still had like one gallon of distilled water I was supposed to drink. And they wouldn't let me take it on the plane. Giant gallon of water. And as soon as I landed, they had me doing press and stuff, and I didn't get to drink that last gallon of water. So I started drinking coffee like crazy, thinking, well, that's diuretic.

It'll help me lose the water. And when that 24-hour period came where it was time to cut the weight, I hadn't really dropped anything. I was still like 22 pounds over. So I had to cut 22 pounds in 24 hours. Whoa. It was terrible.

It was awful. I've seen... You know, the first round, I came out strong. I felt really good. And then after the second round, it was like... It was almost like,

you know when you have a dream and you're trying to fight somebody but you're laying on your arm and you can't get the punch off? It was just like that. And it was a bad performance, so I learned from that one a lot. The point of diminishing returns,

that's a big one when it comes to weight cutting, right? It's almost like a whole other event in itself. There's like the fight, the training for the fight, the preparation skills, strength and conditioning, all that jazz. And then there's this weight cutting thing that's a totally different event. And guys fail at it. Like this past weekend, two big important fights, the guys failed at it.

John Lineker failed for like the fifth fucking time the guy can't make 125 but he wants to be the bigger guy yeah you know he doesn't want to fight 135 and then kelvin kelvin gaslam same thing couldn't couldn't make 170 for like the fourth time you know it's i don't know how many times kelvin's missed not as many as lineker but he's you know he's cutting it close many times and then then you got a guy like Anthony Johnson that was like really, had a really bad reputation in the UFC. He got cut because he couldn't make weight. And then finally decided to stick to his natural weight and he's killing it, you know. So it's ridiculous.

It's a weird balancing act. I think everybody has their own, you know, you got to learn your lessons and work from it. There's never been a guy like Johnson who like at 170, you know, he's a good fighter, very good, but struggles to make weight and then fades late in fights because he's depleting the shit out of his body. Goes all the way up to heavyweight

and beats the shit out of Andrei Arlovsky. And you're like, what the fuck? Yeah. Heavyweight? And then drops down to 205 to compete in the UFC, makes weight, no problem,

and is the number one contender now. And just terrifying. Terrifying. A terrifying fighter. Amazing. It's amazing how this guy, like, not torturing his body is now one of the best fighters on earth. Whereas three years ago, he didn't have a career. His career was fucked up.

Right. All just because of weight cutting. Yeah, you know, it's a weird thing, you know. If you don't do the weight cutting and you already like same day weigh-ins then you still have guys that are going to try to cut the weight and fight the same day and it's not healthy you know it's terrible boy especially striking sports it's terrible for you with wrestling but guys get away with it but with combat sports anytime you're you're involving head strikes you you really don't have enough time to replenish all the water that protects your brain, all the water in your head.

And that was one of the issues that people used to have back in the old days where they used to weigh in and fight on the same day. They changed that around the Daku Kim fight, I believe. It's also when they dropped it from 15 rounds to 12 in boxing because they just felt like 15 is too long. And they changed the gloves. Heavyweights used to wear 8-ounce gloves. Wow. And then now I think you have to be under 145 to be in 8-ounce gloves. Wow.

I mean, can you imagine heavyweight fighting with 8-ounce gloves? It's basically an MMA glove, just a different style, you know. Wow. Well, how about the Jack Johnson days where they used to wear those Everlast bag gloves? Right. Those little tights. They were just basically knuckle pads. That's crazy.

Well, there's some guys that think, and I'm one of them, that MMA would probably be more realistic and better if no one wore gloves. I feel like if you can knee someone in the face, elbow someone in the face, kick someone in the face, why you punched him in the face with gloves on, just protects your hands right more than anything and also the wrists like having your wrist taped up and nice and solid like it makes it so you can hit people harder you could be much more careless with your punches like if you had bare knuckles it would be a much more realistic like scenario as far as like what you can do with your body right you're taping everything up and wrapping everything nice and tight and solid and padding it you know you're turning your hand to a different

thing right well it's like some athletic commissions allow you to tape your ankle some people some athletic conditions don't you know if you watch like the uh like the okay ones and stuff you'll see like badr hari and these guys have like a huge amount of padding placed over their ankle and their foot yeah that padding is not protecting the person they're hitting. It's protecting you. So if you're ripping kicks and you kick somebody in the elbow and you have a pad on it, it's going to protect you. You're going to be more likely to keep kicking than if you smashed your foot in the first one.

So it's kind of interesting. Yeah, I think protect your tees, protect your balls. That's it. I think maybe that's the best way to go. But everybody has this thing where it would look more barbaric if somehow or another your knuckles weren't protected right well then also you got to look at it from like a promotion standpoint you know if everybody was breaking their hands and and fights you know it wouldn't as a fan we wouldn't get to see those

fights you know as often as we like to do to see them is true. You talk about the impact and the problems with brain damage and the side effects for guys after their career. Can you imagine if we had even less padding on our hands? Well, they think that there would be actually less brain damage because guys wouldn't get hit as much. You'd have to be much more judicious with where you placed your punches. Because of the fact that if you hit somebody in the forehead, you're most likely going to snap your knuckles.

Right. You'd be a little bit more careful. I don't know. It's a weird argument. Yeah. It's like the same argument with football. They've said that if football players didn't have pads, didn't have helmets, it would be a safer game for the players.

But, of course, in football, they're not punching each other in the face. Yeah, and there's always going to be that one guy that like just like the one guy they did same day way and there's always gonna be that one guy that thinks he can still cut 30 pounds and fight the day of yeah dies or yeah the one guy that doesn't care and keeps hitting the person when his hands broken you know it's uh yeah that's true that's true so you were in camp with uh nick diaz in preparation for his fight this past weekend with Anderson Silva, which was an amazing fight. And I've been thinking a lot about that fight after it was over. And one of the things that really locked into my head was there's a lot of people that are calling for Anderson to retire now.

And they're saying that – and even Chris Weidman is one of them. He said he'd like to see Anderson retire. But I watched the fight, and I was thinking about myself after the fight. Like, Nick and Silva, that was a better fight than Nick and Carlos Condit. It was a better fight than GSP and Nick. Like, these are, it was a good fight. It was a good, competitive, exciting fight. And, you know, Anderson Silva fighting Nick Diaz is a tough motherfucker.

He's a good fighter. He's very smart and very crafty. And I think that, you know, like the guy coming off of those two fights, it's almost like just we expect more of him than of just a regular fighter. Right. Like if that was GSP in his prime and he put on the exact same performance, and if you just, you just CGI'd GSP's body and made someone watch the fight,

well that's a good fight. Well the beginning was kind of ridiculous, Nick was clowning him, which was hilarious. Hilarious, you know. I was howling laughing, I couldn't stop myself. I was slapping the table. When he laid down and put his head like he's taking a nap. We were in the corner laughing, we couldn't believe it.

I was worried about him, you know. Going into the fight i felt a lot of responsibility for him um kickboxing wise you know right and i felt like my my job helping him out you know he's one of my good friends i created with him anyway but in this fight at uh camp i was kind of more of a coaching and uh i felt a lot of responsibility you know not him not to get caught you know did i teach him did i teach him the right things did i tell him enough stuff i felt like a lot of responsibility, you know, him not to get caught. Did I teach him the right things? Did I tell him enough stuff? I felt like a lot of responsibility. And, you know, I'm yelling out instructions or whatever, and he did that.

And I was like, ah. You know, and then he stood up and walked right at him with his hands down. I'm like, ah, don't get fucking hit. Right, right, right. But, yeah, I was super proud of him. Yeah, that's happened to me in the past too. You know, when I fought Calcly, nobody thought I was going to win. I was, oh, Joe's going to me in the past too with uh you know when i fought cowcly nobody nobody thought i was gonna win i was uh joe's gonna get destroyed you know and i was the only

one who believed i was gonna win and then once i ended up beating him decisively then it was oh he should retire he's not good anymore and i think that's just not fair you know it's like the guy comes back from a you know two losses and one of them was a horrific you know shin break and then nick diaz does what you know before the fight everyone thought nick wasn't going to go more than one round you know he was going to get murdered by the goat you know and then nick puts on a great performance anderson you know nick's hard to fight nick's hard to finish you know but then all of a sudden it's all he he's not the same guy he's he's he should retire i just think that's not fair for anderson or for nick you know yeah i agree i think anderson did a like i said i think he did better

than carlos condit did he did better than georgini pierre did george essentially fought him a little bit on the feet but most of the fight he took him down you know and tried to take him down and control him on the ground and george is a very strong guy he's got real good top control but you know anderson stood up with him and the entire fight was taking place kickboxing and I think Anderson looked good you know and especially when you come off two big losses like that and your heads all fucked up and you know everybody's calling on you to retire first of all the first fight had to fuck with his confidence so hard they did

that because he was clowning and he got caught, which is everyone's worst nightmare. Because when you're clowning, you're trying to make fun of your opponent. And then, boom, you get cracked with a big left hook and the lights go out. And you're like, no way. That way? To lose that way after all those victories? After the Vitor Belfort fight? After fucking up Chael Sonnen in the rematch?

And after all those spectacular victories against James Irvin and Forrest Griffin. You know, to lose like that is like, holy shit. Yeah. I mean, going into the camp, I was looking at stuff because, you know, it was a really tough fight for Nick. And, you know, a lot of people didn't think he was going to, you know, Forrest Griffin when the fight first came out said that, you know,

it was just a silly fight. I don't know what to call it, a super fight. You know, he's just too small for that, you know, a lot of people didn't think he was going to, you know, Forrest Griffin when the fight first came out said that, you know, it was just a silly fight. It wasn't, I don't know, I wouldn't call it a super fight. You know, he's just too small for that, you know, and I think a lot of people count him out. But when I was looking at Anderson's fights, things that I noticed were people say he was showboating or whatever. I think that when it didn't go his way against Chris Weidman the first time, he started, he kind of broke mentally, and that's why he started showboating.

And I had done that in the past and paid for it. But ultimately, I think that his style is to bait people into coming so he can use his reach and then catching them with shots. So with Nick, my thing was you have to find that middle range somehow. Either get him to come at you or go just enough that you're inside of that middle range but not go all the way into the clinch and get and get stuck in his clinch you know right and uh that was i think i had a lot to do with nick baiting him to come forward and i think i also messed with uh anderson's head no one's ever no one's ever clowned anderson you know a lot of these guys go in there and they uh one i think they get

surprised by there's not prepared to fight that level of kickboxing. You know, they're not used to seeing that level of striking, that speed, that range, those moves. And then the other thing is that they get out there and they're like, I'm fighting, you know, the best striker in the world. This is the GOAT. This is the GOAT. Right. And I think that was a big thing for Nick was, you know, I don't think Nick believes for a second that he's the greatest fighter of all time. You know what I mean?

Right. And same thing with Chael Sonnen the first time he fought him. Chael fought, you know, for all the stuff that Chael said, Chael really believed he was going to beat Anderson Silva that night, which is why he did beat him for, you know, almost the entire fight until he got caught. I think the second fight maybe was a little different. But I think most of the other guys that he fought didn't really think that they could they didn't visualize themselves winning that fight and then that gave it to Anderson well Anderson is a great counter striker and that's always been what he's most spectacular at I mean he will lead but most of the time he only does it when he has a massive advantage like

the first couple rounds against Damian Maia like he was going after Maia but Damian Maia, like he was going after Maia. But Damian Maia is like a plodding guy who doesn't have good strike, or especially back then, didn't have good striking. But if you look at the Talas Leites fight, or if you look at the Patrick Cote fight, he likes to lay back and let guys come to him. And when guys just stand there and wait for him to come, the fights get really boring.

He was involved in a few stinkers that everybody kind of forgot about. And that was because he's not the attacking style of fighter. There's some guys that just fucking attack. Like Rumble. Anthony Johnson goes after you. Bell rings. He's charging at you, throwing bombs. Anderson has never been that kind of a fighter.

He's always been much more of a tactician. And then there's always the air of invincibility. But that air of invincibility is gone. It's just completely gone. It's gone. I think it's gone. It was so weird seeing him weeping after the fight, too. And then Nick goes and picks him up.

That was pretty badass. And Nick was like, come on, man, you can't be crying. You're the greatest of all time. You can't crying you know nick and nate they get uh painted to be these like bad guys and you know that's part of the persona that you know they promote and that's all well and good but like they're very very respectful you know when he um uh when nick beat frank shamrock he was on the ground after the fight and nick reached down and picked him up and said you know you're a legend you can't be on the floor stand up or whatever yeah and this is but all people see is you know they go for the stare down and the press

conference and Nick flicks him off and Frank Shamrock grabs his balls but they're both very respectful fighters and you know I think they get they get a bad rap sometimes well he definitely gets crazy before the fight and anxious and but that's to be expected and the shit talking look sun tzu said it in the art of war you know uh miyamoto musashi talked about it in the book of five rings there's all sorts of things that go on in the fight and in any contest there's advantages to be had and there's mental advantages that if you do not take advantage of those mental advantages and your opponent does you're at a disadvantage and when nick immediately starts to fight and he's like he's got his hands

out to to anderson like what bitch what bitch and he's walking towards him come on what the fuck you're gonna do come on what are you gonna do and you see him talking like constantly talking and you just see anderson like people get flustered when nick does that big time he does it in sparring too does he really yeah he does he does it in sparring. The first time I met Nick, I was brought in for Nate's fight with Donald Cerrone. And when I got to the gym, Nate had hurt his neck or something, had to go to the chiropractor or something. And they were like, oh, just wait.

Nick will be here. You can spar with Nick. And I was like, okay. So Nick shows up. And I'm a big fan of these guys. I was kind of a little starstruck and uh nick shows up and he's sup yeah and i'm like tell the coach that brought me in i was like so are we gonna spar are we gonna fight right now he's like you're gonna fight right now you know and but it was just like just like he walks into the cage you know kind of like just

looking me up and down kind of thing and then you know we we sparred it was just like, just like he walks into the cage, you know, kind of like just looking me up and down kind of thing. And then, you know, we sparred and it was really hard. We had like a really good, a really hard session. And after that, he was like, kickboxing, huh? So, yeah. You want to hang out after? You know, we started hanging out after that. But it was, it was very much like, like his, you know, that's, that's who he is, you know.

Yeah. What kind of insight can you give us to why is he like that? Like what's going on behind the eyes? Honestly, I couldn't, you know. Nick's a good friend of mine. I couldn't tell you what the hell's going on in his head. That's just who he is, huh? I think he gets people thinking like he doesn't know what he's doing or he's crazy but i guarantee like he once you figure out he

knows exactly what he's doing all the time there's a plan which there totally is then uh you know but you worry about him sometime like what is he what's he doing well he's an enigma and far as like you look at the way he behaves you go okay well this is like a thug who's a street guy. And then you find out, oh, no, no, no. He's on this incredibly clean organic diet. He runs triathlons on a regular basis. The fucking guy swims back from Alcatraz. I mean, he's an incredible endurance athlete. He's not like a dummy.

He's a very calculated guy, legit black belt in jujitsu, like very, very good on the ground. His boxing's outstanding. there's too much good there's too much like too much preparation too much discipline too much intelligence and in the way he carries himself inside the inside the the competition he's not dumb at all he's not dumb no he's just he's very smart and like he's an enigma yeah some of the stuff he talks about is just like, you know, I want to take notes, you know, like the diet stuff. He's always on me, my shit. I drink Rockstars and energy drinks.

You know, smoke cigarettes from time to time. Do you? He's like, he's very much not. Did the cigarette thing come from Thai, from training Muay Thai? Because so many Thais smoke cigarettes. It started when I was a kid you know my dad always smoked, my step-mom always smoked, my brothers I'm the youngest of three they always smoked. From Ohio everybody was smoking back in

the day and I just started when I was a kid and then I think when I started doing kickboxing it was more like okay like there was other I guess I made excuses there was other people that smoked cigarettes kind of thing I mean I don't advocate it at all How often do you smoke cigarettes? I smoke cigarettes pretty often Really? Like right now? You're smoking right now while you're in training?

No shit Like a pack a day? I try to cut back when I'm having fights Just because I'm running I'm training really hard I'm a regular smoker of cigarettes Jesus Christ, Joe. Yeah, it's not a...

That's fucking terrible. I'm not going to hide who I am. You know, some people do have vices and whatnot. But what's incredible is you fought in that fucking Glory tournament, which was a brutal tournament, which I went to in LA. It was amazing. That fight with Simon Marcus, when it went into the fourth round, you caught him with that right hand.

First of all, that is a fucking war for one fight Yeah But the fact you had a fight three fucking times in a night against world-class Fighters like that Wayne Barrett and your next fight Jesus Christ and then Levin right Levin in the finals who's one of the best in the world Yeah, that is a crazy fucking night of combat yeah it was it was it was nuts what the fuck is the next day feel like oh my god man it was terrible how many seconds did you smoke the next day i gotta man i can't believe i'm saying this

so after i switch oh man don't smoke cigarettes kids it's bad don't smoke don't smoke cigarettes kids it's bad for you don't smoke don't smoke it's really bad and like people you constantly hear shit from people like joe you know and nick and all the other people you don't you don't get um people don't uh respect you as much when you smoke cigarettes you make dumb choices like that in in the fighting community you know it is uh it is what it is but well you have great cardio which is weird i train really hard i'm a very um hard worker when it's time to buckle down like i buckled but how much of an edge do you think you would have more if you didn't have cigarettes i've thought about that for a long time um like goddamn dude probably would have more of an edge but like you might be the baddest motherfucker ever if you quit cigarettes that's true uh well i don't think i'm that far off from it now to be

honest with you you're pretty close you're pretty close. But, yeah, after I knocked out Simon in the Glory tournament, we're in the back dressing room, and, you know, they want me to lay down and ice me and all that stuff, and I'm like, Coach, let's go outside. Let's go. You smoked a cigarette in between the fights? I went outside after Simon and had my hands wrapped and walking out. The security's like, where are you going? where you going? I'll be right back smoke cigarette

Calm down a little bit fellow better. And then yeah, I felt It was such an insane night that night after the Simon fight. I was really pumped but like I was banged up But I thought I was really on like this high from beating him and he had beat me twice in the past and it was really a there was a big moment for me and then the Wayne Barrett fight was just a really frustrating it was a really mentally challenging fight you know his style really the first time we fought it really frustrated me and I did what Anderson did with with Weidman the first time I kind of cracked under like the frustration I put my hands on my hips and you know I kind of gave away the fight what's what style like describe his style uh it's just very it's very

different it's almost like he makes it up he's got very strong boxing he's got heavy hands he's very he's very big he was the first person I fought at 185 where the guy that I weighed in against and the guy got in the ring with were two very different sizes you know and um that messed with me a little bit but he he was running away, he, not running away, but he was trying to use his movement, and every time I would try to throw, I just got really frustrated by him not engaging me, you know, and that was something I had to really learn from, and going into the second fight, I was ready for that, prepared for it, and I knew it was going to be an ugly fight, and it wasn't going to be the type of fight that I really liked. Simon is the type of guy I like to fight.

I like to be in essentially like a war, but let's fight, let's get it on. Wayne was stepping backwards and putting his foot on the rope and jumping off the ropes and doing a lot of weird stuff that was just frustrating for me. So I had to stay focused on that fight, and then I got the W. I honestly didn't know who won the fight because it was so neither one of us were really scoring but you know after watching the video i see that i won the fight um and then so i had about 30 minutes after the simon fight before i got up for wayne but after the wayne fight it was like go in the back change your gloves and it was there was like one fight between us it was like it was like nine

minutes before i was back in the ring again and i was walking to the ring and i just kept thinking like how the am i gonna do like what am i this is i like my god this is crazy nick was in the back and he was just like i don't know how the you're gonna do this dude like my legs were just not at all up and down my face hurt from head butts and and uh getting dropped when when uh simon dropped me in the second round of the first fight. Hit me around the chin and it didn't really affect me mentally. I never got rocked by it. My legs went out right away and I felt all of the punch like in my neck.

It was like pop, pop in my neck. And yeah, walking out to fight Artem, I was just really proud that I had the balls, I guess, to do what I was doing. I was more in shock of what I was capable of. But I really didn't feel like I had anything left to win the fight. But I was on my way to the ring. I was just really proud. That's some archaic shit, those three fights in one night.

To get world-class fighters to fight three times in one night. I went there and I talked to Kevin Kay, who is one of the big wigs over at Spike, and I said, this is awesome. You know, this event is awesome. These fighters are awesome. It's so cool that you guys have world-class kickboxing. I go, but fuck all this crazy fighting, three fights in one night.

I go, this is dangerous. Yeah. This is not smart. If you guys lose somebody because of this, if someone dies, like a world-class guy dies because of this, you guys look like assholes. Like, don't do this anymore. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's that dramatic.

It could be if a guy gets through. You're right, it could be. If you have a war, if a guy has a war with another guy and gets dropped three or four times in a fight, like some fucking George Foreman, Ron Lyle type shit. Where they're just blasting each other back and forth and one guy manages to just get through by the skin of his teeth, and then he gets head kicked an hour later by somebody else. That shit is no bueno. You know, and that is a possibility. Like, you fight, you should fight once in a night, you know, you're in camp, you're training for a long time. I mean, obviously you can do it, you did it, but if you had your choice to be at your best to fight a guy like Levin, you want to be at your best. You want to go through a full training camp, and you don't want to have two fights that fucking day, nine minutes before you fight one of the best kickboxers on earth.

And it's like when you're going into that tournament, and both times that I fought Levin, your, your training camp is for that first fight, you know? And then in the back of your mind somewhere, it's like, Oh, well, if I get to the next round, like if it could be this guy,

it could be that guy. You kind of try to get some sort of game plan for everybody. But then the third fight after that, you're just, you know, I hadn't even thought about getting to Levin in that tournament or how I was going to fight him. It was beating Simon who had beat me twice,

you know, and then beating Wayne. And then, you know, it was just really tough. And, yeah, neither one, I mean, it wasn't at my best. Obviously, I was all beat up when I fought him. So I think the fans deserve to see. And the same thing with the first time I fought Levin. It was the second fight in the tournament that we fought. And, yeah, it would be really nice to see really who is the best,

who's the, you know, when they're on their game. Yeah, that's true, right? The first time you fought him was the second fight in a tournament too. That's so crazy, man. And that tournament was nuts because I was supposed to fight Steve Wankling, which at the time was the number two guy in the world. And then I knew that I would be fighting Levin in the finals because of his matchup.

And like six days before the fight, Wakelin pulled out of the fight and they gave me Kingo Shimizu, who I'd never heard of, who was like the Japanese champion who used to fight at heavyweight and was coming down to middleweight. And I had like six days to watch tape on him and try to figure out a strategy. Well, Levin's such a slippery guy, too. You were the first guy to ever catch him like that.

You had him really fucking hurt. I thought he was done like kudos to that guy For getting through it because you cracked him and then on the way down you caught him with a knee I think that knee actually woke him up to be honest tomorrow watch it I was like he was dropping like he was out on the way down and then my knee I think it was like that second impact like honey brought him back. But yeah, I couldn't believe you guys How weird is it that that's real? Guys have been knocked back awake. Knocked out, and then, boom, they get hit again,

and then all of a sudden they're back in the fight. It's very strange. We see it a lot in the UFC where these guys are out, limp, and then right when the ref breaks them, they're going for a leg or they're coming back to sort of. Yeah, you see guys have their eyes roll back behind their head and then they get hit again and it's almost like they refocus like the new jolt of electricity to their brain like clear yeah you know it's very weird that's another thing like with uh you've seen it

with like dan henderson it's the most fights like oh he's out and then he comes back or yeah czech congo when his fight with uh oh god i, I can't remember his name. The other guy. Pat Berry. Pat Berry. Yeah. He was gone, and then came back and hit him. That Pat Berry fight with Mui Casa was hard to watch. Yeah. That was hard to watch.

Pat Berry is a great guy. I love that dude. He's such a fun dude. But, man, he's had some rough KOs over the last couple of years, where he had never been KO'd, and then he gets KO'd by Congo, and then he gets KO'd by LeVar Johnson. But the Mui Casa one was hard to watch. That was hard to watch.

That was a hell of a shot. I really like that guy, Zach. He seems like a really, really good guy. Yeah. He's cool. I was happy for him, but yeah. He seems like a really good guy. But he's another one.

He's not built like a fighter he's built like some crazy giant bodybuilder dude which is great for like a round and a half and then you get into the third round or fourth or fifth if you're fighting a championship fight and like you know what you saw he fought uh two fights in one night in that last tournament right and in the second turn he just was a different guy He's just a different guy Like whereas you can be the same guy for the first round as you can for the fifth round those big guys They what we were saying earlier about cutting all that weight, right? They just when you have that much muscle to feed like there's there's definitely benefits You could bum rush a guy and you you're just a machine for as long as you have oxygen.

But there's that weird middle balance where you're trying to find the comfortable middle ground between being ridiculously strong and being an endurance athlete. Yeah. Terry Sokuju had issues with that, right? Yeah. When he first came on the scene in Pride, he was like, just who the hell is this guy? He knocks out Arona and knocks out Noguera. And then the UFC, you could see he was really strong,

and then he would kind of fade in the later rounds. I think he has mental issues too. I think there's a little bit of a confidence issue too when it comes to when you talk to the people that have trained with him and the people in his camp. Sometimes guys get through that. Vitor went through a long stage where he had confidence issues, and he got through that. that you know vitor went for through a long stage where he had confidence issues and he got through that some you know it's not insurmountable but uh but yeah definitely the muscle have packing all

that muscle it's not good for you it's just it doesn't it doesn't help you know it it helps a little it makes you really strong if you're a grappler you know it could certainly give you some advantage but those guys man when especially when you're if you're built like that you're trying to fight five rounds man you're taking a crazy gamble and that gamble is i'm gonna get this guy out of there in the first couple rounds and then you got a guy like we were talking about cain velasquez yeah he's huge but has like a ridiculous cardio you know it's uh people are just humans are just so weird yeah right? Yeah. They vary so much, man. They vary so much. You know, you get guys that, like, you know, you remember Cabbage?

Yeah. Back in the old days? Oh, man, I love Cabbage. Cabbage was awesome, dude. That was awesome. You could hit Cabbage with a fucking tree. You could pull a tree out of the roots and clang it off the side of his head, and he would smile at you. You know, that guy could just take this unbelievable punch

yeah and that's just biological he's just born that way yeah but it's like you know somebody told me the other day i had a great chin or nick had a great somebody said something about having a great chin and i said you know don't ever say that about me you know when people start telling you you can take a great shot or you have a great chin it means your defense is bad you know what i mean right and it can only last so long. And then, you know, you see it. One guy can go, you know, take shots forever, and then one fight later he cannot take a shot like Chuck Liddell. Chuck Liddell.

And Dan Henderson, this last fight against Musashi. Musashi hit him with a punch that Dan would have eaten like a Tic Tac earlier in his career. And his legs go. It's just everybody's got a certain amount of holes in their tits. Jermaine Taylor was like that too. Oh, yeah. After Kelly Pavlik knocked him out.

He was a fantastic boxer. He still had all the skills, but just couldn't take a punch anymore. Yeah, this is just a point where you reach. And it's also how you prepare, right? How many shots are you taking in the gym? How are you training? Are you training smart defensively? Some guys are just

fucking full pedal to the metal offense you know that's how they train that's how they think that's how they fight and then when it comes to defensive skills like they might have like an a plus for an offense but their defense might be like a c right you know and then when it starts going their way and they they clang up they don't know what to do, they have to think instead of just being instinctive and rolling with stuff because it's a natural part of your everyday thing. That's a weird thing about fighting, man. It's like how much emphasis, especially when it comes to MMA, how much emphasis to put on striking, how much emphasis to put on grappling,

how much emphasis to put on your cardio and strength and conditioning, how much to put on skills. And I think that a huge part of that that's missing i think in a lot of people or even just in this conversation is like the mental aspect you know you can train perfect you could have a decent weight cut you could do everything correctly and that two hours before the fight from the time you check in to the time that you walk out in that ring if you're not mentally strong enough and prepared for that, you just don't perform. You know what I mean?

And, you know, was Anderson Silva that prepared for Nick to lay down and start heckling him? Most certainly not. You know, it was a lot of those. So I think for me, I hired a mind coach when I first started with Glory, and it's been a huge change in my career. Now, when you say a mind coach, that's interesting that you say that. It's not a sports psychologist.

You called him a mind coach. And what do they do with you? His name is Vinny Shorman. He's out of the UK. He's actually an announcer for – he's probably one of the most active kickboxing announcers in the world. He used to do K1 and Showtime. He's been around kickboxing for a long, long time. He does all kinds of really cool stuff with me.

I don't want to give away too many secrets, but he does hypnosis on me sometimes. Does he live in the UK? He lives in the UK, and he'll hypnotize me through FaceTime over the phone. I swear to God, it happened. The first time he did it, like he had been posting and I had heard about him a little bit and I had had some issues in the past where like my worst performances were not because I didn't train hard.

It was a mental thing, you know. And the first time I started talking to him, he like wanted to hypnotize me and I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. You're going to hypnotize me. And he's like, okay, I want you to sit down and you know you're gonna start feeling blah blah blah blah and as he's talking i'm like just quietly with my eyes closed i'm like this dude's so full of shit this is not gonna work this is not gonna work this guy's so dumb and next thing i know i'm like and uh you know it worked uh immediately and the things that the little things that he

told me to do i immediately felt a lot better like a lot better and I could see the difference my coach could see the difference and what's his background is he a psychologist um I think I'm not really sure how he got into that it's uh he does like a lot of seminars and goes to a lot of things and studies a lot of stuff I don't really know his if he went to school for that or what that is but he's very very good at what he does he works works with Liam Harrison. He works with Jordan Watson. He works with Julie Kitchen. He worked with Andy Howes and most of, like,

the really high-level kickboxers overseas. That is a very important point, you know, and I don't know how many guys utilize sports psychologists. I know Anderson did a bit for this fight after the Weidman fight. I would think that would be really important for him. Yeah. Going in and stuff like this. I mean think that would be really important for him. Yeah. Going in and stuff like this. I mean, a lot of guys, you bring it up and they can immediately see it as a disadvantage

that you even think that you need help or that you, you know. But for me, there's so many things. Like, fans don't understand the amount of pressure that a fighter is under going into a fight. And then to go into a fight where the whole world thinks you're going to lose. You know what I mean? You have no chance. Like me fighting Cal Klay, I think I had nine professional fights.

And, you know, he knocked out Mighty Mo. And he was a Roger Domner champion at over 200 fights. Yeah, if you don't know who he is, he's a world-famous Thai boxer who was about 175, 180 pounds, fought Mighty Mo, who was close to 300 pounds at the time, and head kicked him. And it was just one of those ridiculous K-1 matchups, what they used to do.

In Japan, they love freak shows. They love to put together Noguera versus Bob Sapp, where Bob Sapp's 375 pounds. And they put Bob Sapp versus, even crazier, they put Bob Sapp versus Manoaa who's like 185 so you got a guy who's ginky pseudo versus the samoa the samoa guy ganky pseudo also fought um fucking the fat guy with the ball uh butterbean yeah remember that yeah butterbean that shit was ridiculous we're talking about more than a 200 pound weight disadvantage and to go on the ground

and him on top of you yeah unbelievable unbelievable yeah I mean they don't give a fuck in Japan they want to put on

Godzilla vs. King Kong that's what they want to do they want to have ridiculous matchups and I want to watch Godzilla vs. King Kong you know I'm into that you know

I am too sometimes they say like styles make fights and like sometimes it's I mean obviously you want to see who's the best of the best of the best. But sometimes you want to see these other, you know, these two might not be even in the top ten.

But, man, they're going to fucking get down, you know. Those are the fights I want to see. Yeah. I mean, look, Bob Sapp versus Noguera, to me, still is one of my favorite all-time fights. Because it was so ridiculous. And the fact he got piledrived in the first round, which you never see in MMA. It's kind of illegal. It's illegal in the U.S. at least.

Speaking of illegal, can we talk about this? Joe, I think we can talk about this. Sure. What's up with all these guys smashing, trying to stomp kick like Anderson did to Nick? It's kicking the knees. I just think it's a little shady that a guy comes off with such a catastrophic injury and the first thing he does is start stomping away at somebody else's kneecap in a fight. Did you see the fight with Miguel Torres, the kickboxing fight, the recent fight?

I did. Jamie, pull this up. Miguel Torres knee destroyed. You'll find it. Or like legacy kickboxing. Yeah, it's probably GIF. You can find the GIF file of it. It's fucking horrendous.

It's the worst one I've ever seen. He does this, the oblique kick, and he does it right to the knee, on like the side of his knee, and his knee just, you see it get destroyed. I mean, I just don't, I just don't think that's, I don't think it should be legal. I just don't think it should be, you know, I'm trying to knock

somebody out. I'm not trying to like actually kill them and finish their career, but I think if you start messing around, because I knock somebody out I'm not trying to like actually kill them and finish their career but I think if you start messing around cuz I've had two knee surgeries and had to come back from and it's just It bothers me to see somebody Intentionally try to attack any joint. But what do you think about the arm bar? So, you know, it is right What about heel hooks? I see a guy like who Samar Pajaras was I feel hook specialist? I don't necessarily have a problem with the heel hook. I have a problem with a guy that holds onto the heel hook after you tap multiple times

and then intentionally rips your leg off. Which he's done. Which he really does. I just don't really care for that. Yeah, the heel hooks are a particularly devastating one to hang onto. Like, if you hang onto a choke, you put the guy out. But with folks who don't, who've never trained, it's not that bad to get choked unconscious i know it seems like it would be really bad but it really is just like

a it shuts your brain off and then turns your brain back on again it's sort of the best way described is like a garden hose you pinch a garden hose it stops the water and then you let it go and the water goes flowing through it it's not nearly as bad as getting knocked out so holding on to a choke and putting a guy unconscious it's really not getting knocked out. So holding on to a choke and putting a guy unconscious, it's really not that big a deal. But holding on to a heel hook, you tear the ligaments apart, and you're talking about a guy who's going to go through six months of rehab, surgery, the whole deal, and then it might not ever be the same.

Yeah, you're taking away a guy's livelihood for over a year. Most likely a year. Just to what? You already got him to tap or whatever. Yeah. I just don't particularly... Well, Pajaras is kind of crazy.

There's something, there's a little bit of a mental issue. You know about his childhood, right? His whole story. It's really heart-wrenching. I mean, he grew up, he was working full-time

from the time he was like a little boy in a farm. You know that giant scar that he has on his chest right he got that when he was working and he had a crazy glue it together because like they had no money for food they had no money for the doctor like he he used to eat pig slop because he had no food like he would eat like the food that they would feed pigs it's a it's her it's horrific wow so this guy like he went through some really horrendous shit like as a child in rural brazil you know in intense poverty so i

think it's hard to get through that unscathed and he most certainly hasn't so i think every fight that he has man he's fucking fighting for his Right. And if he gets a hold of your leg, he could see this. Ugh, this sucks. What's that? It's loading up. Yeah, look at this. I mean, he caught it sideways, too. Miguel was heavy on the front leg,

and he almost kind of, like, stepped in sideways. Ugh, the dude caught it, like, just in the outside. Look at that. Oh, my goodness. See, I throw, like the outside. Look at that. Oh, my goodness. See, I throw, like, a similar kick to that where I take the front of my foot, and it's almost like a slap kick, and I do it to the shin bone. But it's not to injure him. It's to stop his forward momentum.

A lot of times when I do that, their head comes forward, and I can throw something. But to go directly in the knee joint, I mean, that guy threw that intentionally to do that. I don't think there's any question that he was trying to buckle his knee like that yeah he's attacking the knee and that's it look at me he's coming down yeah well it's actually miguel was stepping forward so his knee was off the mat like as it landed see that oh it's kind of touching but he was coming forward and the guy caught yeah see his knee came up and he's coming forward and then

it just went down on it and just wrenched it across oh it's horrible to watch oh and that's you're out for a year yeah if and it might not ever be the same again if you come back they're doing this new thing now man where they're 3d mapping um your meniscus. They're taking this thing that they've created. It's like a scaffolding. They 3D map this scaffolding. They insert it where your meniscus is and it has proteins in it and your body builds your own meniscus

on it. That's awesome. So you're going to be able to rebuild your meniscus. That's awesome. For years that's been the thing they can't change. You tear your meniscus like you're screwed. That's really good that they can do that. Well, cartilage, too. Cartilage. They've started to do that with stem cells.

They've started to inject stem cells into the area where people are missing cartilage, and cartilage regrows, which is incredible. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, they're doing some cool shit. They did PRP stuff, too. When we were with my knee surgery, they were thinking about doing that with mine. They didn't do it. Platelet-rich plasma is really cool.

There's another thing that I've been doing called Regenikine. And Regenikine is amazing. What's that? That's the stuff that was invented by this guy, I forget his name, but he's in Germany. And he created this procedure where you take the blood, they pull it out like a lot of blood, and then they spin it in a centrifuge and heat it up. When they heat it up, it takes the blood, and the blood reacts to the heat as if you have a fever. It creates this amazing anti-inflammatory response.

It's this yellow serum. They pull this yellow serum out, and then they inject it directly into any area where you have an injury. And it's like platelet-rich plasma times 100. It's amazing. That makes sense. It's like the cold laser therapy or light therapy. That's what they do to me a lot. Yeah.

Essentially, the light or the heat triggers your body to send more blood and nutrients and heal itself. So you're just straight heating that stuff up and injecting it back in. Yeah, it's amazing, man. It's amazing. I've had it done on my knee, my neck, my back, my elbow, my shoulder. It's incredible. Every time some shit's fucked up on me, I just go right down there and get shot up. And you feel the difference right away?

Oh, yeah, man. My knee was fucking with me me I've had three knee surgeries and my knee was fucking with me for like the last couple years I was like man I might have to get this fucking thing scoped again and I get it shot up like five months ago nothing squats kickboxing nothing just never fucks with me that's never fucks with me anymore it's weird it's amazing so they can do incredible shit now with medicine and science. Thank God there's so many eggheads out there that are just fucking pounding on the keyboards

and doing it in the lab and trying to re-engineer human beings. It's amazing. Well, it's like what Anderson and Tyrone Spung, that break 15 years ago, they would have amputated your leg. It would have just been, that would have been that. Really? Yeah. Somebody was telling me that the other day. They used to amputated your leg. That would have been that. Really? Yeah. Somebody was telling me that.

They used to amputate legs for that kind of break? Yeah. If the leg snaps. Yeah. They said they would amputate. What? Yeah. Really?

Because of something about the tissue or something. Just 15 years ago? Something like that, yeah. That's hard to believe. Don't quote me on that, but that's what I heard. Somebody might have lied to you. Somebody probably lied to me. I'm pretty gullible.

Well, they probably used to have to like, Joe might be lying to us all right now about this gold stuff. They're, they're reinjecting. I don't know. No, man,

I've, that stuff's, Dana White is the one who told me about it. He, he had it done for his Meniere's disease. Meniere's disease is something you have in the inner ear and it would, it was fucked with him his whole life. He had surgery to try to fix it.

And he, he got shot up with this uh the virginity and just bang gone just goes away i wonder if that would help nick nick uh hurt his uh left elbow like hyper extended his left elbow when we were training like maybe three or four weeks before the fight and uh it really started messing with him like the week before the fight and uh we were in vegas and his manager actually called dana to find out you know what doctor or whatever to go to to get him a cortisone shot into his elbow and uh like you wouldn't mean nick won't even take ibuprofen i was like dude take some ibuprofen why won't he take ibuprofen he uh i think it was about um he used to cut really easily back in the day ibuprofen is like't know he uh i think it was about um he used to cut really easily back in the day

ibuprofen's like a blood thinner sort of thing or something that he right makes him bleed more or whatnot but um yeah he was having like he we were walking around the hotel and like if his arm would lock out and like he would have to wait a second for it to like click back so it was jesus christ yeah and then you're going into a fight where you're boxing is your your strong suit you don't feel really comfortable throwing your left hand. That's ridiculous. But, yeah, I wonder if that gold stuff would have helped. Yeah, I guarantee you.

But he got through it. I mean, he landed some good shots with it. He definitely did. Well, once that adrenaline starts flowing. Yeah, that's what I was telling him. Like, you're not going to think about that when you're out there, you know. Yeah, the Regenequin thing, that's all the rage. Like, all the basketball players, like Kobe Bryant gets it done all these different guys

get it done guys were flying over to Germany to do it but now they have an office in Santa Monica and I think they have an office in Dallas I think as well they have a couple of them they're opening up but they might be opening up one in Vegas but they're opening up all over the country because the response is amazing that's nuts yeah we live in a weird time science is amazing it's amazing it really is i just got done today i was doing cryotherapy have you done that yet i haven't done it i wanted to go to one especially after the last man standing tournament my entire body was just messed up i had this uh it still kind of messes with me a little bit now but

somehow along the line of the three night three fights i got hit in the chest with something i want to say it was probably Simon with one of those knees. But my whole body hurt. And then as the swelling and everything started going down, my fucking chest just started killing me. Like your sternum? Yeah. And it was like, then I noticed I had like this ball. It was literally like the size of like a tennis ball on my chest.

It still swells up a little bit now. But it swelled up so much that it pinched off all the nerves in my chest it still swells up a little bit now but it swelled up so much that it pinched off all the nerves in my chest and then like my arm would like i'd have like uh stingers all the way down my arm and i'd wake up i mean for the first like week or two after the fight i was like waking up in the middle of the night like shaking i would get a fever because i was in so much pain from this nerve stuff and uh i guess i got like multiple x-rays thought my sternum was broken couldn't figure it out wasn't there's no break and they said it was basically like uh you know these you see these guys where they get hit in the face or hit in the head and they get these hematomas on their head

and it's just blood and crap that's stuck between the skin and the bone well mine was i guess inside of the cartilage of my rib or whatever and you know even for the melvin fight when i would be training jujitsu or I'd be working on my chokes or somebody puts their weight on my chest, like it would swell up afterwards. So I was taking ibuprofen by like a handful there for a minute. But it's doing a lot better now. Yeah, the cryotherapy probably helped out a little bit,

but I think that's just one of those things that's going to heal too. The cryotherapy is awesome for recovery. Yeah. That's what it's amazing for. I do ice baths. I mean, I think the cryotherapy is a lot shorter. That's what it's amazing for. I do ice baths. I think the cryotherapy is a lot shorter. It seems like a lot cooler. A lot shorter and apparently a lot more effective

because you're going 250 degrees below zero for three minutes. Then you get out, you get on the elliptical machine, you warm your body back up, and then boom, right back in for another three minutes. What's that feel like? Dude, it feels amazing. You get out of there, you feel like you could fucking jump over the moon. Really? It's amazing.

It's amazing. You get out of there, you feel like you could fucking jump over the moon. Really? It's amazing. It's such a wild, it's wild. Like, if you could take that in a pill form, people would just be fucking chewing on them all day. Because most people are scared of the feeling, like, fucking 250 degrees. It's really not that bad. It's really not. You just kind of stand there. I mean, I'm not, I don't even freak out. I just kind of move around a little.

It hurts my nipples, so I cover my nipples up when I do it. I don't know why. I don't want my nipples to fall off. Not that I use them or anything. They're pretty numb anyway. But that's the only thing that starts to feel really bad. Your legs get super cold towards the end, but it's just three minutes. You just kind of deal with it for three minutes, and then you get out.

As soon as you get out, you're like, woo-hoo-hoo! As soon as your body realizes it's back in room temperature. You feel all rejuvenated. Well, the blood apparently, the science behind it is your body thinks this motherfucker is going to die. Okay. Somebody just dropped you off at the top of the world and it's zero degrees below zero and you're fucking, you're going to die within moments. So it pours all the blood to your organs. Yeah, to your organs, try to protect your organs.

And then once you get back to room temperature, it pushes it all out and it creates this amazing anti-inflammatory effect. Like all the soreness that you have and just, it just does a weird thing to your body. But the energy that you get out of it, I don't know. I don't know if it's an adrenaline rush, if your body realizes like, hey, we're not going to die. Life is beautiful. Look, the sun is shining. I'm alive. It's like one of those things where they say,

you don't really appreciate peace unless you've experienced war. You don't appreciate love unless you experience hate. You don't know how beautiful it is to be able to walk down the street and not freeze your dick off until you're inside one of those booths. But there's a lot of physical effects. Yeah, I've got to try that. It sounds really cool. Yeah, you can research it online, like all the different the like what they know about the actual um biochemical effect

that it has on your body but people swear by it like again like basketball players mma fighters like alan joban uh who's uh one of our guys at 10th planet he's in there every day eddie bravo does it every day it's just it's amazing When he was training for the Hoyler fight, too, especially, he was in there every day. It's amazing. It just makes you recover quicker. But the feeling you get out of it, I love the best. I walk out of there, it's like your whole body feels alive. It's wild.

I'll take you. When you come back, let me know. I'll take you down there. Yeah, definitely. Introduce you to those guys. There's a lot of cool science, actually, with cold therapy. After the last man standing tournament I was thinking about doing i just didn't i didn't i don't know why i didn't end up doing it but nike makes a cooling vest that uh it's basically like that has all these pockets or we have his pockets in it and it uh it keeps you like really

cold so i was thinking after the fight of putting that on because i found out that like 75 again don't quote me on these numbers but 75 of the your energy system is spent on temperature regulation so like if you had to have multiple fights in one night you know how much time are you wasting sitting in the back sweating and you're wasting energy that you need later on in the fight so we were thinking about trying to put, to use that cold pack or those cooling vests. I think Nike came out with it for the Beijing Olympics. That's a great idea. You have two fights this weekend? No, I just have one fight.

This is one. Beautiful. Which honestly seems like, you know, my coach is like, oh, you know, my cardio is not quite as good as I thought it was. And he's like, you only got to fight once. I was like, oh, all right, yeah. It's hard to compare because when you get in such – I mean, I was in phenomenal shape for that last man standing tournament.

I think I had like – we found out about that fight I think four or five months in advance. I was going pretty hard for it the whole time. When you have a camp like that, like who structures your camp? Who structures like how much running you do, how much strength and conditioning you do, how much kickboxing, how much striking on the pads? I mean, like, how do you structure your workouts? My coach would do that. But, yeah, with that camp, it was like, okay.

Because we just came back from the Wayne Barrett fight where he just seemed like a lot bigger than me. So I was like, you know, I was fighting at 175 before I signed with Glory. And then when I went to Glory, it was automatically to like 187 and 186 and uh you know the glory 10 tournament artem 11 wasn't a very big guy and kingo shimizu worked out really well for me so i thought i was good at that at that size and then with wayne barrett he was just so massive like he's just a big guy you know and uh so i wanted to put on some muscle so we did a lot of strength conditioning just i was doing like uh every day sometimes twice a day i was doing uh going to la fitness with my buddy and doing like body strictly bodybuilding stuff no cardio just uh i was taking i think it was shooting for like 3500 calories a day which is just

i would feel lethargic and and just exhausted all the time. And I did that for a few months. I think I got up to about 215, which was really big for me at the time. And then the last, I think it was probably the last like five weeks, I stopped with the strength and conditioning and was just focused on speed

and trying to get used to that size that I was. And I trimmed down quite a bit. But it was like build the muscle, bulk up, and then get fast and loose and then go into the tournament. And then my cardio and my speed and everything kind of comes in the last four weeks. Yeah, there's a lot of guys who like to do that for MMA. Like they take off from a fight and then once they're done or they get out of camp, before they say if they know they have a fight four or five months away,

they'll do nothing but strength and conditioning, no fight training, no sparring, no getting hit, no grappling. They're just lifting weights and just like jumping boxes and doing all kinds of plyos and shit like that. That was the first time I'd ever done that, that I really focused on the strength and conditioning stuff. And then when I did start, when I stopped with that and I started doing the strength and conditioning stuff and then when i did start um when i stopped with that and i started you know doing the runs and stuff nick was actually in town and we went for a long run at uh venice beach like we were at ronda's house that day and we went for like this long run and we did like six mile run i felt really good and then i was like hey let's let's hit these sprints on the way back and there's like bathroom and then it's like you know 200 yards

you have another bathroom or whatever and he's like okay we'll run to that to that next uh the next bathroom will split and like i couldn't i was just in shock at how many gears i had i was like i never ran that fast ever in my whole life and it was we had really it was the difference of that time that i had bulked up and really worked on uh the strength conditioning and then the period of cutting down and getting lean and getting fast again and i was just the strength conditioning and then the period of cutting down and getting lean and getting fast again. And I was just very, very explosive and it was a really good sign.

I smoked, Nick, yeah. If you listen to this, Nick, I beat you. So that's interesting. So this is like, that's a direct result of all the weightlifting and all the putting on muscle and strength. That was the first time I really noticed like a big difference

because I always really hit hard. I mean, I think I've always hit really hard. But that was something I really noticed was my explosiveness out of my legs was definitely a lot better. It's weird that for fighters, it seems like every training camp is almost like a science project.

You're trying to figure out what is the right mixture. And also, back to the mental thing, I think that that's um you know i always say like i'm trying to get like the tip of like an arrow you know what i mean each fight i get kind of closer to that and then you know you you make a mistake or whatever i'm trying to get to this pinnacle of like mentally focused you know what i'm saying right the perfect the perfect perfect perfect edge do i get too pumped up before i fight was i too cold was i flat was i right thinking about the right things and you know that's what my mind coach really helps me

is uh there's so many things going on in my head and he just tells me the right things to think and you know a lot of it is also like the way you the way you talk to yourself or about yourself the way you describe yourself you know i used to say stuff like uh you know i have really good punches but my kicks aren't that good and you you told me like, hey, you gotta stop saying that stuff. Well, my kicks really aren't that good. You kind of self self-sabotage yourself. You only allow yourself to get as good as you talk about yourself. That makes sense at all. Yeah, you define. You define yourself. That's why I call it mind coaching instead of psychological,

you know, psychologist or whatever. Right. Just like my coach tells me, hey, you're dropping your hands or you're doing this or you're doing that or you need to focus on this, this, and this. My mind coach is doing the same thing. And I think that like the, I don't know, I think everything has really come, the stars, so to speak,

have all kind of aligned for me in the last couple years. I feel like I'm at an age now, I'm just turning 31, although I guess I can't change my Wikipedia page now. Why, what does it say? It says I'm 31. I was going to change it to like 26. Don't do it. It's a slippery slope. I know guys that are 40-something that try to say they're 30. It's fucking ridiculous but I think

you know I've reached an age in my career where I just uh I'm a lot more mature I'm a lot better athlete I you know it seems like everything's kind of lining up now and I have the right coaches behind me I've been with my coach uh Mark Camoro since I was uh since I was fighting in amateur fights you know he's taken me throughout my whole career so that's great that's a guy who knows you really well then yeah you train at the yard in la yeah where where is the yard uh it's in lincoln heights right now it's right outside it's on avenue 26 it's right where the five and the one team 110 meet so it's like downtown area yeah it's basically downtown is it that's a bitch to get to isn't it the fucking traffic sucks well i kind of live in

like that general area like i live in uh alhra, South Pasadena area, so it's not too bad for me. I was living in downtown for a long time, and then my son started going to schools, and I was like, you know, I'd rather have him in a little better school system. Yeah. The best school system we could, you know, the best school system, I think, is like Orange

County, but we couldn't quite, it didn't quite work out, but the best one we could find was Alhambra, which is like South Pasadena. Pasadena is nice nice quiet area man yeah i love it there pasadena was like apparently back in the day when hollywood was sort of first created in the 20s or whatever the uh the stars would fucking booze it up and do blow in the hollywood hills and the producers are like let me get the fuck out of here. And then they set up shop in Pasadena. That's why if you go by Pasadena, there's these giant estates, these beautiful houses.

God, there's some amazing houses in Pasadena. I fucking love Pasadena. Yeah, it's nice. There's a gym. Isn't there like a Sit Yotong? Yeah, Sit Yotong is in Pasadena. Pasadena? Yeah.

It's a good kickboxing gym. They've been around for a long time. Muay Thai. Yeah, LA's a weird spot where you would think there'd be a lot more top-level MMA gyms in this area than there are. Yeah. There really is a... There wasn't a whole lot. In Hollywood, it was like Legends was the only MMA gym for a long, long time. Yeah.

And then... Yeah. When Legends went under, and then you've got some stuff down in orange county of course you got rain you got kings but you know yeah team uyama but there's no like jackson's mma where you got like world champions training in one facility that's like this center spot it almost seems like like for a lot of places like it might actually be better to be in a small town and bring the guys in and then of, you're going to have less distractions and less bullshit if that happens. Right. But L.A. doesn't have a lot of great kickboxing either.

There's not a lot of different spots. I mean, for as many people as there are, 20 million people. Yeah, when I moved out here from Ohio, it was to pursue kickboxing. It was because Los Angeles and California was the center for kickboxing in this country. It was the only place when I moved out here when I was 19. They were the only ones putting on sanctioned Muay Thai fights was Dennis Warner and Voot Promotions. But there's really good gyms in Van Nuys.

There's a really good gym in North Hollywood, two or three in North Hollywood. There's Santa Clarita's got some really good gyms. So, you know, I think that there's a lot of Muay Thai here in Southern California. And I think that's, you know, when I was fighting in amateurs and smokers and on the smaller shows here in California. The amateur was a very high level, you know, very high level. And I only had, I was 23 and one as an amateur, and most of those were smokers, just local amateur fights before I went pro. There's so many jiu-jitsu schools here.

That's what's ridiculous. Yeah, jiu-jitsu is crazy here, right?'s ridiculous. Jiu-jitsu is crazy here, right? It's amazing. When you compare jiu-jitsu to all the other martial arts, it's almost like 10 to 1. It's like how many jiu-jitsu gyms.

And then world class. You know, Hickson's here. Krohn's here. Jean-Jacques Machado's got two gyms here. Hegan's got a gym here. It's like on and on and on.

You can keep going over and over and over. There's so many fucking world class jiu-jitsu schools here. Because Brazilians, they like the sun. They want to be near the beach. You can keep going over and over and over. There's so many fucking world-class jiu-jitsu schools here. Because Brazilians, they like the sun. They want to be near the beach. You know, it's like this is the spot they gravitate to.

You can't disagree with them. Yeah. Well, it's amazing how much that's changed in this country. You know, when I first started training in 96, there was a small handful of black belts in the country. There was just not that many, many like world-class places to train now they're everywhere every city you go to there's a legit black belt that's teaching classes and you know there's places that have you know henzo's got like 500 plus students in new york city you know that new york city's another hotbed it's like you know there's henzo and marcelo

garcia and you know on and on and on you just keep going. There's just so many gyms there. But when it comes to a place where you have, like, a legit world-class MMA training facility, like an AKA, you know, there's still not that many of them. Right. You know, and especially when you look at California, you would think, man, you know, this is, like, so much kickboxing, so much jiu-jitsu, so much MMA, like, you know, or so much, you know, so many fighters. Right. But not like one, like, big central spot. And then the ones that it's like almost like, you know, like Timo Yama's got like Ian and most of their team is a lot smaller. You know what I mean? I was going there for a long time and he's train with Shane Del Rosario before he passed away.

And after he was gone, there wasn't a whole lot of guys my size down there. That's an issue for bigger guys too, right? Yeah, it's a big issue. Especially for heavyweights. It's really hard for heavyweights to find good training partners, to find a skillful guy that's above 225 pounds. It's just not that many. Right.

I think Alliance has got a good team down in San Diego, right? Yeah, they're pretty good. They've got some good guys. You know, of course, AKA has Cormier and Kane. There's some good guys there. Rockhold's been doing really well lately, too. Yeah, yeah. Rockhold's a beast.

This is an interesting time because people are still trying to figure out how to train correctly for MMA. You know, it's like you've got a lot of guys that are still holdovers from the early days where they would get together and try to figure it out and slug it out and there was a lot of like unnecessarily hard sparring or unless they're hard not smart sparring and then you know people are still trying to figure out like what's the best way to go about it and then you have people that have figured it out like the aka's that have figured it out or the American top teams where they have it down to a science you know it's just but there's just not that many

whereas like if you look at any other major sport look at baseball or football like they have protocols like strength and conditioning protocols you put all their athletes through and there's been programs because they go through from high school to college to the pros. They know state-of-the-art this is what we're supposed to do. This is the best way to recover. This is the best way to train strength and conditioning. This is the best way to do this. With MMA, also, there's so many skills.

There's so many things to learn. It's one of the most interesting things about MMA, but it's also one of the things like, man, what do you concentrate on? That's a really good point. With me transitioning over to MMA, that's one thing I'm really enjoying is there's so much. I've done kickboxing for so long where I don't know everything there is to know about kickboxing, but I feel very at home. If I get in good shape and my coaches are just sharpening me up and keeping me fresh i think i can get in a kickboxing fight and uh just react naturally you know and

with mma it's still i'm still learning and still thinking about things and a lot of times i'm i remember what i was supposed to do like 10 seconds after you know i got tapped out i should have done this or did that you know so but it's a lot of fun to uh to be evolving and keep learning new things for me. There's so much stuff to learn and so many different styles and different ways to win. That's been really beneficial for me working with Nick and Nate is they think about it so analytically. Going on top, going on bottom. If this doesn't work out, then you're going to end up here.

It's really interesting. Is it difficult? Because you're going to end up here. You know, it's really interesting. Is it difficult because you're doing both? You just fought Melvin Manhoef in a big MMA fight in Bellator. And then you're going from that a couple months later, you're fighting in a big kickboxing event. Is it difficult to do both at the same time? Well, I'm going to find out. You know, right now I'm living the dream. I feel like I can be really successful in both right now,

depending on the right matchups. You know, I don't think I'm a contender for a title in MMA just yet. But, yeah, you know, there's things I have to remember not to do for both. You know what I mean? Right. If I knock somebody down in MMA, I don't walk away and expect an eight count. Unless you're Mark Hunt. Yeah, you know what I mean? Right. If I knock somebody down in MMA, I don't walk away and expect an eight count. Unless you're Mark Hunt. Yeah, you know what I mean?

He's the king of the walk away KO in MMA. It was funny. When I knocked out Melvin, I felt the walk away. Like, I needed to do the walk. I knew he was out. But my coach and my manager were very adamant that the night of the fight and then, like, the week of, that, like, this isn't kickboxing. There isn't going to be an eight count. If you you drop him make sure you go over him and finish him you know like you need to finish right away and so like i hit him with like the hook cross i didn't

even know i hit him with the left hand i thought he i thought it was just the right hand until i saw the video and uh i saw him go down and he you know he's going down with his hands up and i like wanted to walk away and then like it was like this voice in my head, like, go finish him, go finish him. And I went to go, and Mike Beltran had jumped in the way. And then I was just like, totally ruined my walk-off right now. He could have just walked off. He could have just walked off. Right.

Yeah. Pull that up, Jamie. Joe Schilling KOs Melvin Manhoef. That was a big fight for you because that guy, Melvin Manhoef, his style is terrifying. People are terrified of that guy because, first of all, he's black as coal. He looks like a fucking superhero. He comes out throwing bombs, knocked out Mark Hunt with one punch.

I mean, he's a terrifying knockout striker. And his highlight reel is like 12 minutes long. Everybody, like the week of the fight, everyone's like, Joe Schilling's fighting this guy, and they tag me in it. Like every time I checked Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, it was like people reminding me that I'm fighting this guy, and it was just like knockout, knockout, knockout. He's got the highlight reel of death.

Yeah. It was a really big fight for me. It was a really tough fight for me too. It was a really bad camp. It. It was a really tough fight for me, too. It was a really bad camp. It was probably the worst camp of my career. My dad had passed away like three weeks before the fight, and like two or three days after that. Why does that look so shitty, Jamie?

My cousin passed away. Like, pull it back. Is it our computer that's doing that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's dragged to the computer. Why is it? Come on, man. It's a YouTube video.

Is it really that bad? What do we got to do to fix that? Tell me whatever we have to do to fix that. Let's fucking fix that because this is pissing me off. This looks like shit. Can't even see it. Boom. Damn.

That dude's been flatlined a bunch of times over the last few years. Yeah. Those Dutch guys, a lot of fucking tough guys in Holland, man. A lot of tough kickboxers in Holland. I think I'm almost like a kamikaze fighter. It's either I kill him or I be killed, but that's why I'm a fan of him. Who doesn't want to watch a Melbourne man-off fight? Yeah, no, I'm a huge fan.

Mike's gym produces some goddamn savages. Him and Badr Hari is a goddamn savage too. What is he doing these days? Is he going to jail again or what's happening? I'm not sure what that situation is. But I think he's training for a fight. I think he's fighting in a global fighting championships in Russia or somewhere. He's not fighting Glory?

I don't know. Why doesn't Glory get that guy? I asked myself the same question. He's a fun heavyweight. He's not fighting Glory. I don't know. How does Glory get that guy? I've asked myself the same question. He's a fun heavyweight. He's a fun heavyweight. He's one of my all-time favorites. Yeah, that dude's a mad dog. I'm not sure he's going to pass any piss tests, but he's a mad dog.

A lot of fun to watch. The Dutch kickboxing scene is not one for piss tests. Yeah, that's one good way of putting it. I think America is the only country in the world that really drug tests their athletes, especially with fighting. Really? I don't think that there's any drug testing. In Japan, there was definitely no drug testing.

In Japan, they drug test you to make sure you're doing steroids. To make sure you're doing it. Make sure. I have a friend who was, he's a natural. I mean, he should have been

fighting 155 and he was going over to Japan and they wanted him to fight 185. Yeah, they were like, you know,

you're a big guy. Let's do some juice. Let's get you pumped up. And he was like, what? Like, he was used to deal with American promoters

and they never said that to him. They sat him down. They flew him out there, sat him down and they essentially told him to get on steroids what did he do he didn't he did he wound up fighting in America but he went over there you know and had the meeting he had one fight over there and they you know they liked him and but they wanted him to go up I think he fought over there at 160 and they uh they wanted him to fight 185 like what the

fuck are you guys talking about? I mean, it's one thing if you're a big guy already and they're like, oh, we want you to go up in weight. It's another one where you're really good, but we want you to put on 20 pounds of muscle and fight. Well, I think in Japan, they feel like the larger weight classes are the ones that sell the most. Right.

And I think that was their thought process. He's a good-looking guy. They feel like this guy, put some big muscles on him, we're going to make some money. most right and i think that was their their their thought process he's a good looking guy they feel like this guy give put him put some big muscles on him we're gonna make some money you know they're definitely not thinking like hey for your career this is the best move right or your safety well you hear those stories about the yakuza back in their pride glory days giving you bowling ball bags filled with money i heard a few stories like that. They show up at your hotel room the night before the fight with grocery bags full of money.

When guys take them back with them, they would be taping rolls of money to their body. Right, because you can only take $10,000 or something back. So they'd be literally taping stacks of money to their body to try to get through security. Hoist had every member of his entourage had to hold $10,000 to go on the plane to go back. Yeah. But try explaining that.

So you're traveling with this dude and he's got $10,000 too. And this guy, what a coincidence, he's got $10,000. How does this guy have $10,000 too? What did you guys fucking find some money over there? Like what the hell happened in Japan? Yeah. No taxes for that. The glory days it's a that's a beautiful thing about this

sport though that the glory days were only like a decade ago right you know it's like it's it's so young right 22 years since the ufc was first created it's hard to believe and that those guys in the glory day are still you know competing now you know lot of them. So is your plan to this glory days, you're fighting in glory. I would love it if glory became really successful because I'm a huge fan of kickboxing, but I don't know. I mean, how, how successful was their pay-per-view venture? The pay-per-view venture. I didn't think, I don't think it did very good at all.

But I think it was more about like a strategic thing. Like if you give away your product for free all the time, then it's hard to ever establish, okay, now you have to pay for it. So I think they did that as more of like they needed to do a pay-per-view, but their pay-per-view buys weren't that great, which I think was kind of unfortunate

because that was like the end-all, be-all for combat sports in one night. If they could have put that on Spike TV, I think that would have done huge numbers for building their brand. But they had a great... The other thing they did on that was they had two cards at one time. So you have...

Crow Cop was the main event on the card that was live on Spike TV. I think it's just hard to get people... I mean, I love kickboxing, but I'm not going to watch it for an hour and a half and then pay another 60 bucks to watch it for another hour and a half on the same night. Right.

I think that was just. Well, they tried the UFC strategy, the way the UFC has the prelims on Fox Sports 1 and they have the main bouts on pay-per-view afterwards. They tried that strategy. But the UFC is just way more established. I think it's really hard to do that with kickboxing because for the most part, most of the people that are watching have no idea Who anybody fighting is so you watch except Joe Schilling and?

Whoever he fights But if you watch you know the UFC you're you're they're prepping you for the big stars, right? But they haven't really established glory enough to have big stars yet But man that level of kickboxing is so high and it's it's it's kind of frustrating because you know you for the for the uh what do you call them like the the new fan even for mma you know you still get people like oh what's this boring stuff on the ground they don't appreciate the sport they just want to see the you know the action or whatnot like those people need to tune into kickboxing you know those people need to eat

paint right they all need to eat lead paint and go fuck themselves it's just so many asshole fans that's the one thing that just disappoints me so bad when i go on twitter and i read like a fighter will post something you know after the fight and you read all the people talking shit about them just like oh fucking christ man there are so many douchebags. And it's kind of worse for MMA. Is it? Yeah. Obviously, there was a lot more exposure for my fight with Melvin.

I always knew that there was a bigger fan base for MMA than there was for kickboxing, but I had no idea how much bigger it was. When I won the Glory 10 10 i was the first american to ever win a global combat tournament ever and uh it was like a huge deal was the biggest payday i think in american kickboxing history and i think there was like three stories done on me about it total and then my fight with melvin was uh you know it wasn't for title or for ranking and you know it was just a one fight and you know it's been all kinds of publicity and more following from that but like within like two days there was people on my

instagram like just writing the most degrading disrespectful shit about like my family and my mom and my you know just just ridiculous stuff and then uh so you know you get more fans you get more you know whack jobs but there definitely seems to be a little bit more um ignorant fans that hang out trashing people in mma there's just so many dummies in this world to get period right yeah and they have they have an outlet to reach you whereas before you know they would just be yelling at each other at the gas station you know that guy ain't got no heart he ain't got no heart i kick his fucking ass and that's where it would end right now these these now they can tweet directly at me they have an instagram they get on your That guy ain't got no heart. He ain't got no heart. I kick his fucking ass. And that's where it would end. Right. Now they can tweet directly at me.

They have an Instagram. They get on your page and you just leave these posts. You read them and you just go, fuck, man. Imagine if someone came from another planet and they were trying to understand what people were like and they read comments on Instagram. They'd be like, well, we got to nuke this fucking thing. Yeah. Nuke this thing from orbit. It'd be like that movie Aliens.

We got to nuke it from orbit just to be sure. Like, these assholes, these guys have bombs and missiles, and this is the way they think? You know, it's not indicative of the best example of humanity. Yeah. Especially combat sports. There's something about fighting. Well, kind of sports in general, man. I'm not a sports fan.

I don't pay attention to football or baseball. I don't either. Every now and then I will read comment sections on blogs just to see if they're the same. And it's the same. It's the same shit. What's that? Yeah, you got busted trying to get a hooker. It's 7 in the morning.

That's a desperado cocaine move. I've tested that motherfucker. Immediately fired from ESPN. Did they fire him? Immediately fired from ESPN. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. They should give him a raise.

Yeah. At least he's not raping anybody. He's trying to get a hook. He's trying to pay for it. Give the man a break. Look, it's prostitution. I think that's the worst possible. Like, what could be worse than that?

Prostitution? Scandal-wise. No, getting caught picking up a prostitute. It shouldn't even be a big deal. No? The guy's trying to get a massage on his dick. That's all it is. I mean, look, if it's 7 o'clock in the morning, he was trying to get a massage, nobody would bat an eye.

You're trying to get someone to touch you for money. That's what it is. But, oh, no, they're touching the bad spot, the naughty area. Ooh, this is crazy. Bad spot. The naughty area. Ooh, this is crazy. You know, if you paid a woman to suck on the back of your neck,

nobody would be like, uh, okay. Yeah, I paid her a thousand bucks to suck on the back of my neck. People would be like, okay. All right. That seems okay. We checked the rules. That's all right. But I paid her to suck my dick. What?

Fucking, what did you say? Why would you do that? You're fired. It feels good? Fucking, what did you say? Why would you do that? You're fired. It feels good? Shit, what did I do wrong? I don't know. She needed a thousand bucks. I needed a blowjob.

Who got hurt here? I'm so fucking confused. Well, the sponsors. The sponsors won't tolerate it, Joe Schilling. We need to sell Gatorade. We're not selling blowjobs. It's fucking ridiculous. It is fucking ridiculous.

It is fucking ridiculous. We live in a goofy, goofy baby world. This is an infantile world. Guy gets arrested for fucking soliciting prostitution. Did he hit up a cop or something? I don't know. I hadn't heard that whole story. I was hoping you knew.

Do you know what happened, Jamie? You should know. You're the gossip monger. He admitted to, I guess the girls said that he was assaulting them. Two girls. And then when the cops came for that, he admitted to the solicitation of prostitution, but not the assault. Oh, so he's a douchebag.

Alright, I take it back. You know what, man? If there was like a legit establishment where he could go to and just give them money and it's just, to me, look, I have daughters. And the last thing I would ever want is my daughters to be prostitutes. However, I believe that part of our issue that we have as human beings with prostitution is just this weird Puritan view of sex, that sex is somehow or another this forbidden evil

thing. It's just two people touching each other's bodies. No babies are getting eaten. You know, no fucking slaves are getting whipped. No one's getting tossed off cliffs. This is not a horrible thing. It's fine if you do it for free, right? No one has any problem if you have sex for free.

The idea that if you give someone money and you have sex, all of a sudden it's this terrible, awful, evil thing. I think that's stupid. I think it's stupid and it's archaic. And this world that we live in is changing. And people are starting to realize that adult human beings. Look, you got a fucking hundred years on this planet if you're lucky. That's it it's just this wild ride of good times and hopefully friends and good food and wonderful life experiences and who the fuck is anybody to tell

you that paying for sex or someone paying you for sex is bad i mean who is that who are those people well they're the same assholes that tell you you shouldn't pay for weed you shouldn't be able to smoke weed right the same assholes that tell you you shouldn't pay for weed. You shouldn't be able to smoke weed. The same assholes that tell you you shouldn't be able to do psychedelics or you shouldn't be able to whatever the fuck it is. If it's not hurting anybody. It's the Nancy Graces of the world. That's it?

That's it. Did you see her interview with... 2 Chainz? Oh, my God. I was so like... First of all, someone stole one of 2 Chainz's chains because he only had one chain on. Really? The whole video. I was is like where's the other chain?

Motherfuckers got one chain You can't call yourself two chains and have a fucking debate on CNN, sir You need to use your goddamn birth name. All right. I need to see a fucking birth certificate and a driver's license two chains Two chains, you know, I'm not, my name's not Joe Schilling. It's Crazy Donkey. You know? What would your rap name be? What would my rap name be?

I don't know. Would it just be, this is Can't Stop Crazy? I guess so. It's Can't Stop Crazy. Where did that slogan, Can't Stop Crazy, come from? That actually came from, I think it was my second pro Muay Thai fight. I just kind of went berserk with elbows and knees. and one of the guys that trained in my gym was like oh you know you can't stop crazy and i just remember thinking that was like the dumbest thing i'd

ever heard at the time dude later on um there was a time when before glory before lion fight got a tv deal there was uh kickboxing and the the shoulder shows that I was fighting on the fans didn't really have any connection to any one of the fighters unless you went to every show so there was it was really hard to set yourself apart as you know the high-level guy or the better guy like who was really doing it you know because there was no media of all and me and like the other five or six best kickboxers in the United States got together and started like our own website started promoting ourselves and we hired got our the best photographers in the sport you kind of just built our

own media for ourselves and you know eventually lion fight got a TV deal and you know glory came but for a long time it was just us kind of making it for ourselves. And we were like, what do we call it? And it was like, oh, Can't Stop Crazy. Okay, that's cool. It was kind of a movement. It really kind of took off. It's weird.

I can't even describe what it is now. People always ask me to describe it. It's just a group of people that we sell T-shirts and we used to do our own interviews. With no TV backing, you know, There was nobody promoting us, you know. These are the shirts right here. Yeah. Nice of them. See, you can wear this.

This is 100% douche free. No one would have any idea. Note the lack of skulls. Yep. There's no swords going through a broken skull with a snake wrapped around it. There's no pit bulls getting fucked in the ass by a dragon.

Actually, Drew, if you're listening our designer I would like a shirt made with a pit bull getting fucked in the ass by a dragon in glitter and glitter and that's gonna be the show some Japanese foil writing behind it you know yeah I don't know man the the world of on a t. Ed Hardy dropped off pretty quick. Remember that was like. I wonder why. Yeah. Fuck.

Didn't seem to work out. Ed Hardy was like, it was like Von Dutch for people with head injuries. Yeah. It was like, you know, people like, Von Dutch is just fucking too clever for me. I mean, what do you think really started that downfall for them? Was it the Hulk Hogan show where he wore, Hulk Hogan was like their poster boy for it? I think it's just overexposure. I mean, people love those old school Americana tattoos, which to me, that's what Ed Hardy always used to represent.

Like, it was kind of cool. Those old, like, sailor tattoos. Like, I like those. And then they bedazzled the shit out of it. Yeah, then it was like, what is going on here? And then it became this weird, it was like a Von Dutch thing. Like, Von Dutch used to be the fucking shit. Ashton Kutcher used to wear those stupid trucker hats, and everybody was like, man, I gotta get one.

And I would look at it, and I was like, what the fuck are you wearing, man? That looks like you're wearing, like, some diner in, like, Cincinnati. They have, like, a hat that they sell. You know, that's what it looked like you know what I mean like an it's just some obscure like truck stop diner right you know and then all of a sudden all these people were wearing it like you know I'm fucking tilted to the side I'm crazy it's just I don't know what happened but it became this thing that douchebags would wear I don't know I don't know how it happened yeah but. But it went, it came, and everybody,

you know what it was like? It was like the spinning wheels of clothing. Remember those spinners that people used to have on their rims? They lasted like a little while where people were like, what the fuck are we doing? And those spinners killed the custom wheel market because it used to be everybody would get a car

and then they would get custom wheels. Like you could take a pretty decent car but put some sweet wheels on it and everybody like that's pretty nice car but those fucking spinners came out and everybody's like that's it we're going the other way don't ever change your wheels just leave the fucking wheels the car came with like this is ridiculous we can't be associated with this you notice that yeah yeah it's not a yeah now it's like they like they're like painted wheels or like stand like. Low key. Yeah, low key. You know, you might have nice wheels, but they're like painted black and match your car.

Yeah, that's okay. They're not like giant gold spinning, you know. And then they had like 28s or something that came out. Oh, Jesus Christ. They took the wheel and then they would like make the lip of the wheel even bigger so it looked you know yeah they had tires that were like literally the thickness of an iphone you know that was what was like your tire and they put it on like a old monte carlo now it's like a monte carlo monster truck you know that's a common thing right those impalas yeah they would put it on these ridiculous cars they have like wagon wheels yeah they were like

they're the most preposterous wheels ever. And those things break all the time. You go over a bump, hit a pothole. There's no tire. It's like you're running around on metal rims. They bend. Yeah, I put 20-inch wheels on my Acura. And they're not like splashy.

They're like paint black wheels or whatever. But I either had to roll the fenders, which I didn't realize when bought the car but you're kind of accurate yeah that's a tl nothing nothing spectacular but it's uh when i got the wheels i uh i didn't know that you couldn't fit 20 i just want to go they rubbed you know they would rub unless you rolled the fender so i got when i ordered it they were like oh you need to get these 35s or 30 tires. I'm like, whatever. I didn't know what it was. Apparently, a 30 tire is like this big. Very thin. It's incredibly thin.

And it looks cool, but every time I drive up north, I get a flat tire. All the time. I've had to repair the rims like three or four times just because the tire gets so low. You hit a bump and it puts a hole in the or bends or cracks the rim yeah go back to standard i'm just gonna go put my stock wheels back on yeah put the stock wheels back on acura makes a fucking hell of a car though they're an underappreciated car yeah they really are i've had i love it two of those i had two nsxs they're my i still might go out buy an old one i'm still i'm looking for one those cars are great man i love that car

never had a problem yeah every time you go to start starts right up now honda's just you can't with toyotas and hondas those will run forever i had a honda accord when i was in high school it was like a 92 honda accord and i never changed the oil on the thing like i was no money i drove around with two dollars with the gas all the time like you know never never changed the tire and i think i ended up having two clutches i went through two clutches because i was like fast and furious the movie had come out back then so it's like burnouts at every like stoplight um man i did a lot of dumb shit with that car you know those uh those whip it um things where you can it's like a i think it's the actual use for it is a to be like a whipped cream yeah maker but you can it's like a canister and you

can put a little whip it cartridge in it and it'll uh you hit the button it'll fill up and you can fill up your balloon off of that right so i had i think it was like 16 or 17 i had wired like put a tube through my um through my uh glove box all the way into my intake in the front and i put i was like you know a little street racer guy and i would crack off like four or five whippets into that little container and thought i had nitrous in my car through my through my glove box true story but that honda i ended up giving it to a friend when i got another car and um he drove it literally until the wheel fell off, until the front wheel fell off. It had like over 325,000 miles on it,

and I think he never, you know, he just ran until the wheel fell off. Japanese make amazing cars. I have a friend who has a Lexus that has a million miles on it. Really? A million. Yeah, it's like it's a famous car. Like, I don't know if it's his. He's Matt Farah from the Smoking Tire.

He always has images of it. He brings it everywhere. He puts it online. It's got a million fucking miles on it. A million. They just don't break. It's like something happened along the way where it became acceptable for cars to just fuck up. Yeah, to just be a piece of shit.

Yeah. And it's American cars. Why do we do that to ourselves? You know? It's not just American cars. Well, I mean, a piece of shit. Yeah. And it's American cars. Why do we do that to ourselves? It's not just American cars. Well, I mean, it's always the Japanese cars that last forever. Yeah. The Lexus, the Toyota, the Honda.

Even German cars, which are amazing. That's true. I've had German cars that have problems. I had a Volkswagen, it's a piece of shit. They fuck up. I know someone who has a Porsche Cayenne, and she went to start it the other day. Catastrophic fucking failure.

Just engine lights on on year-old car it's probably like what a fucking 160 grand or something that Cayenne turbo pressing buttons all these lights are going on like what's going on here nothing got a tow it get a towed they like oh there's a problem wrong with your thing and they replaced the thing and like what like what if you're in Alaska that shit went wrong like what if you're driving across country yeah you know when you're driving your porsche in alaska you never know well i guess there are people in alaska that have porsche this must be people in alaska who got some cheese yeah i want to fucking be a baller out there and drive under moose with a fucking cayenne yeah something about those japanese cars though they for whatever reason

it's like the Japanese culture itself. You fought in Japan? I haven't. I haven't. I would think that that's like for, especially for a kickboxer, when it comes down to, like, the K-1 glory days, those are probably the glory days. Not necessarily of Muay Thai, because, you know, there's a lot of, like, the great Muay Thai fighters, particularly,, particularly in the lower weight classes, came out of Thailand. But as far as heavyweights and the larger kickboxing bouts, man, it all took place in Japan.

Yeah, I mean, that's where it's... When I moved out here when I was 19, I was going to school, and then I couldn't afford cable. I had a little job as a room service attendant at the Bonaventure hotel, but I had, I would go to this video store in little Tokyo and they sold all the K one videotapes. And that was,

I remember my girlfriend coming over and just being like, can we watch something else? And it was all the time. It was just like all the time. K one max or a K one heavyweights. And yeah, I mean that was the best, like the a hundredfoot giant screens,

you know, the long walkways, the wars they had in K1. I mean, that was the golden era. The pageantry. And which is what glory is now, you know. So I wish the fans that loved K1 would pay attention to glory. Well, I just think. I hate for this thing to fail, you know. It's been so long that we're trying to get this sport going.

Nobody's going to watch a glory show and not fall in love with it. You know what I mean? I agree. It's just about turning on the damn channel. I told the UFC maybe seven or eight years ago, I told them to buy a K1 because I heard the K1 was for sale. I said, you guys should buy a K1. Did you know the Ultimate Fighter was originally supposed to be the K1? Really?

What do you mean? Mike Kogan, my manager, told me this. He used to work with K1 and K1 USA with Scott Cougar, that the Ultimate Fighter TV show was originally supposed to be K1 on Spike, and the deal didn't go through or something, and then Dana and the Fertittas picked it up and did the UFC for it. Wow. But originally it was supposed to be K-1.

I would double check on that if it's coming from Mike Hogan. Yeah. That's what he said. You never know. He might be right. Joe Schilling is the most gullible motherfucker. But I think that the level is there. You know, like here, like the big fight, Rico Verhoeven, he's like, you know, like one of the best kickboxers.

You could put him back in the K-1 glory days. Yeah, I mean, he fought Peter Ertz. He's fought a lot of those big-name guys. Oh, yeah. I mean, like think about the guys that they have. I mean, it's just like there's a wealth of talent in kickboxing, especially like a lot of these European guys, a lot of these guys from Holland. I mean, there's so many good fighters. It's not a lack of talent.

It's one of those things where it's like at this point, it's almost like it just needs time. It's almost like it just needs – it's like if they're willing to do what the UFC did and put that – put the show on and know I mean look at it wait it out Daniel Gita I mean go Kansaki I mean there's some fucking great fighters you guys have Kara Tanoff now to some really exciting fighters in the heavyweight division as well as all the other divisions but if they just take the time the UFC was 44 million dollars in the hole before the ultimate fighter got on the air. Really? And they were ready to pull the plug.

Yeah. There was one point in time where Dana had a conversation with Lorenzo, and they were like, look, we can't keep hemorrhaging money. Let's just sell it. Let's just get rid of this. Let's see what we can get for it. And they were going to sell it at a big loss. And the next day, Lorenzo slept on it and got up and fucking changed his mind.

He said, fuck it. Gun's blazing. Let's keep going. Let's ride this bitch out, which is what you can do when you're a billionaire. Yeah. Well, I think that's probably not real far from where the Glory story is right now. We have Pierre, the owner of Glory and the head chairman or whatever, is definitely the one funding 90 of this stuff and and pushing that so you know thank you pierre please keep it up you know we're almost there you know we're almost

there look it's so the the product is there see that's the thing it's like the product is there the fights are there anybody who watches that the the event that you were in the last man standing that fucking shit is on my dvr for life which by the way it cut out before the end somehow or another really i don't know what the fuck happened maybe i only recorded it for three hours or something like a retard but the anybody who watches that tournament it doesn't get hooked on on glory and hooked on kickboxing you got no pulse and that's the other thing about it glory is doing which i don't know i don't know any of the finance stuff about it but they're not going cheap on any of it. You know what I mean?

Like, there's a huge event. The production is insane. The fighters are insane. I mean, all of it is just really top-notch. And you guys got Mike Tyson pimping for it now? Yeah, apparently they got Mike Tyson doing this thing now for it, which is cool. Yeah, if you go to the Glory page,

go to gloryworldseries.com, Mike Tyson is doing the intro video, which is pretty fucking badass. Yeah. And it's Rico Verhoeven versus Errol Zimmerman. And then there's you versus, this kid is only 20 years old, huh? Yeah, I think he's 22. Robert Thomas from Canada. Is he 22?

Yeah. They call him the White Dragon, Jim. He's good. He's a good fighter. It's gonna be interesting. Yeah Have you seen him fight before? Yeah, I saw a couple fights online. He fought Artem Levin. Yeah Then he fought Alex Pereira who's another guy top 10 in Brazil I mean came up short on both of those but you know That was I have a lot of respect for somebody that's that young in his career as going after the top top fights i mean that was me um i was the guy

that that wanted those tough shots so i know how dangerous those kind of people can be yeah his last fight in glory was glory 18 in november he killed mike lemare so uh it was gonna be fun man i just i just love the fact like said, that they're doing this. And Nicky Holson is fighting, too. He's so high level. Dude, he's really fun to watch. He's so fun to watch. Really good fighter.

So technical, man. Everything he does, just that classic kickboxing style from Holland. And his boxing is phenomenal. He's been going back and forth doing professional boxing over there between fights and uh yeah his hands are really good he's he's my pick for to win the tournament but then they also got uh raymond daniels who's human highlight reel you know he's a really high level martial artist i don't know if i really call him a kickboxer well he's becoming a kickboxer he's really like a karate guy who's getting into mma who's getting into MMA,

who's getting into kickboxing, rather. But the shit that he does, like that touch, jumping side kick, spinning back kick in the air that he KO'd his last opponent with. I couldn't do that on the bag. I don't know how he does that. And then, like, the timing of it. It's really, really, it's really something else. Yeah, he's learning

the kickboxing game he's still got like some gaps in his his striking you see the especially the transitions between kicking and punching right but the stuff that he can do you know and he's still fairly young i mean he can still learn it he's an la guy too isn't he yeah i think so do you ever train with him um i sparred with him once probably six years ago, I think, when they had that World Combat League when Chuck Norris tried his little thing. Oh, yeah. I think it was so geared for his type of style.

Point karate guys. None of the Muay Thai guys did very well in that. Well, that World Combat League, did they allow leg kicks? They allowed leg kicks, but underneath those pants we had thick shin pads on. Oh, really? And then it was only one three-minute underneath those pants we had thick shin pads on. Oh, really? Thick shin pads.

And then there was only one three-minute round. They made you wear shin pads? Yeah. Huh. And there was one three-minute round. And it's really hard to really make leg kicks that effective in three minutes with giant shin pads on. You know what I mean? That seems ridiculous. It was, well, Chuck Norris was his league, and it was really geared around the point karate guys and that type of style.

You know what I found really interesting about it, though? It was the lack of ring. I really kind of like that. And I'm not sure if the slope. For the viewer. Yeah, if you don't know what I'm talking about, it was almost like a very shallow swimming pool where it was flat in the bottom,

and then for folks who didn't watch it the the edges were kind of sloped up but not not a big slope just a slight slope just enough to let you know that you're at the edge right and then they would bring everybody back to the center it wasn't a very big thing but i think that for for mma in particular one of the things that drives people crazy is people being pressed up against the cage like a lot of people people don't like that aspect of mma like the clinching up against the cage and throwing knees to the leg and you know they get they start booing and they want everybody to separate i've always felt like if a football game can be played in a fucking giant hundred yard field and a basketball

game can be played in this you know really long really long court. Why can't an MMA fight take place on a flat, like just big round flat area like that, where you don't have a ring and there's like, there's a red zone where you're out of bounds, you know, and make that red zone, you know, whatever, it's a fucking five yards or something like that. And then bring everybody back to the center where you don't have any of that. And then bring everybody back to the center. Well, you don't have any of that. If you're going to get a takedown, you've got to get an honest fucking takedown like you do in a wrestling match. Right.

Not pushing a guy up against the cage and pulling his legs out from under him, but an actual legit takedown. Like, giving him pride. It was a lot harder to get a takedown. Oh, yeah. Because you couldn't pull. You know, because what they do is they'll shove you up against the fence and then they suck your legs out. You know, or get to use that sort of thing. I mean, I have a lot more – I'm a lot more comfortable defending takedowns in the middle.

You know, stop, like, sprawl. It's a lot easier to stop a takedown. Once they start smashing you against the cage, then there's a lot of different variables. And, yeah, how many fights, like, Tim Sylvia – I think it was Tim Sylvia and Brandon Vera, where they spent, like, three rounds just smashed against the side of the cage the whole time. It happens. It happens a lot. And people get crazy.

They boo. And it's also hard to see through a cage. If you're standing in the crowd, even if you're on the floor, a couple rows back, and there's a pillar. And they're behind that pillar and they're fighting. You can't see shit. You wind up looking up at the big screen. That's what I was curious. Maybe you could tell me about this.

When they're, the UFC judges, do they have a screen in front of them to watch? They do now. Okay. This is something that we had to complain about for a long time. Because if you're sitting there, and the whole fight is going on on the opposite side of the cage, and you can't tell what's being landed or what, you know? They're throwing punches

and like a lot of those punches that that uh anderson was throwing on nick he did a really good job of blocking them but if i'm 30 feet away i can't tell if they landed or not yeah well sometimes it's really hard to tell for while we're doing commentary like sometimes i have to watch a replay to see if something landed like if a guy's got his back to you and you see someone throw a punch and the guy falls down you're like oh he got hit but then you watch and you go oh no no he stepped on his foot and he slipped and then he went down like sometimes it'll look like a guy got hit sometimes it's better to watch it at home really it is to watch it live yeah you watch it at home you're gonna get the perfect angle you know the UFC broadcast team those guys who are the production guys they're the best I mean they're so good at

catching all the right angles the replays are always on point they know production guys they're the best i mean they're so good at catching all the right angles the replays are always on point they know exactly what they're doing right so you could you could almost see it better from home than you can but there's a lot of people that complain they're like sit in the crowd like i can't fucking see and they wind up like you see like look out in the crowd they're looking up at the giant screen i've went to quite a few uh ufc fights where i was just you know you i feel like you go there for the energy yeah i mean you're there you're there for the energy of the crowd but like you're watching a screen you know yeah well it's an event i mean there's there's nothing like it like when you're watching like nick versus anderson like when they were about to fight

and you know and they're they're in the center of the cage and you know the referee's reading them the instructions and then they back up, and you're like, holy shit. It's happening right there. It's fucking 30 feet away. It's about to go down. There's nothing like that. That's some goose bump-inducing shit. And then he lays down, and you're like, holy shit.

When he laid down and put his hands on his head like he was taking a nap. Or picking his wedge and twerked at him a little bit dude i was crying laughing ctv i was pounding on the table and crying laughing i couldn't help myself it just was so funny it's so good well i had wondered too whether or not nick was going to clown him because all the stuff leading up to the fight was totally respectful all the stuff leading up to the fight was like hey you know nick was saying i want big names i want a big name fight this is a big name fight so you know i respect him and we're ready to go and then when i got to the octagon immediately he's talking shit and you could see anderson was just so not comfortable being the guy that gets shit talked to and i was telling him keep talking like i'm saying i guess i'd fucking with him but like keep

fucking with him it's weird because when I'd fucking with him, but like, keep fucking with him. It's working. Yeah. Because when Nick stopped fucking with him in the later rounds, Anderson started doing a lot better, you know? I think. No doubt. It was definitely, you know, the mind game and the, I think it was a really good strategy that he did come up through that. And I, he kind of, he said in the back that he was going to do something like that.

I had no idea he was going to lay down and put his hands like that. Well, he probably didn't even know before he did that. I think he just knew, like, if he doesn't want to engage, I think he said, I'm going to flip that switch. I didn't realize that was the switch he was talking about, but God, was it awesome. And really, like, it's hard. You know, there's an article that just came out,

and it was called the sober replay or, like, the sober thought, like when you watch a fight after, you know, like the next day or whatever. And when we were in the corner, you know, we're yelling instructions, but between Gilbert and Nate Diaz and Cesar Gracie and I, all of us were just sitting there like, this guy's such a fucking beast. Like, we were so, like, blown away by what he was doing. We were just so impressed, and, you know, I was really proud of him. Well, especially first time fighting at 185, too.

He steps up and fights the greatest ever at 185. After a two-year layoff. Yeah, two-year layoff where he's not, you know, just really not pursuing any fights at all. Just, you know, made a shitload of money off the George St. Pierre fight and just laid back and relaxed for a little bit and just said he wanted a big fight, you know. I mean, he had said before, he goes, I want a title shot.

And they're like, well, we can't really just give you a title shot. Like, you got to beat somebody. Right. You know, and this was an opportunity to fight, you know, a guy who it's just like getting a title shot. I mean, five-round fight with Anderson. And then to do so well i mean the judges score cards and they gave all five rounds to anderson but every one of those rounds were very competitive except the fourth i think nick took off the fourth round but every

one of those rounds i thought was really competitive and really close he was competitive enough and especially if you consider the other fights and anderson has been right i think that's probably also you know they say like you have to beat the champion, you know, so to speak. I felt like you have to really beat this underdog, and I didn't feel like Anderson did that much. You know what I mean? He really didn't whoop Nick's ass. He won.

I feel like he won. I feel like he played it safe as fuck. Right. You know, I mean, he threw some wild shit. He threw a wheel kick at one point in time, but there was no moment in time where he was treating Nick the way Nick treated him. Right. You know, where he was like, come on, bitch.

Like, let's do this. Let's do this. You know, like stood in front of him. He just wasn't ready for that. I mean, the psychological aspect also. Having a guy like Nick taunt you. If Nick knocked him out. Like, what if he was taunting him and then all of a sudden, boom, Nick catches him and he's down.

Like, that would just be devastating. And he just was not prepared for that. Or Nick lays on the ground and he jumps into, you know. Nick's guard, Nick's triangles. And then Nick triangles him. Yeah. Look, anything can fucking happen in MMA. And a guy like Anderson knows it as much as anybody now, especially after it happened to him.

Right. I think also, too, the pressure of competing at that high level and being the champ for as long as Anderson was. Like, I remember when BJ Penn beat Matt Hughes, and I talked to Matt Hughes after it was over, and he was really honest about it. In the cage, he said, honestly, it's a relief. Like, being the champion is a lot of fucking stress. You know, he didn't swear, but he was like, it's a relief.

You know, I'm glad I got this weight lifted off my back, and I'm going to go back and relax and see what's up. That's kind of the impression I got from George when I was talking to George. Yeah. It's the same way. It's extremely – there's a ton of pressure to be a champion for that long, and then everybody, you know, everybody wants you. Everybody calls you out.

Everybody wants to fight you. Everybody attacks your character. It's got to get pretty old. And Nick was talking about that the other day in his post-fight interview. He's like, you know, I wish I fell off and people would stop talking about me. Well, he's such an enigma. You know, there's no one like Nick Diaz. He's such an unusual character.

He really is. I mean, I'm good friends with him, and I really have no fucking idea what's going on in his head 90% of the time, which actually makes it really fun sometimes. How often are you training with him and I really have no fucking idea what's going on in his head 90% of the time which actually makes it really fun sometimes you know how often are you training with him uh I was training with him a lot for the Melvin fight until my dad died I left uh his his pad to go to the funeral and all that stuff um but yeah I'm go up there pretty pretty regularly and when Nick is in between camps is I mean like does he is he training on a regular basis? Does he still do everything, or is he just relaxing? What has he been doing over the two years?

Yeah, when I had the last man standing tournament, that was back in June or July, I don't think he had booked the Anderson fight yet. He still was running with me. I'm training for the hardest fight of my life. I run six and a half miles, and he's pushing me like I'm trying to keep up with him wow he runs at a ridiculous pace he's just he runs at an insane pace does that's does that fuck with your explosion at all like there's some people that believe that all that slow running and slow twitch endurance type work that it can actually fuck with your explosion.

Nick's going to disagree with me, but I think it does. I think that him, Nick and Nate both are not the most like explosive people when it comes to like their movement patterns or whatever. I feel like with me doing more, I do a lot more sprint work than I do long distance kind of stuff. But also like that's more of their, of their style. They're, they're very technical with their stuff. They don't use a lot of strength, and both of them will wear you out

and then whoop your ass afterwards. Right. Both of them have beat the piss out of me from just being durable as shit, and I'm throwing and throwing and throwing and throwing and throwing, and I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm tired. And then they say, oh, motherfucker, yeah.

They start talking shit. Once you're tired, they start talking shit once you're tired they start talking shit yeah well just the whole time you know the whole time you're sparring

when you talk shit like what's he saying oh you know I don't know come on shit like that Nick when let's see when the

for this last fight we were sparring and Nick did I think it was when the UFC was filming it Nick had done like nine five minute rounds with fresh guys it was like me Chidi and Ja. Nick had done like nine five-minute rounds with fresh guys. It was like me, Chidi, and Jaquani.

I brought in to spar with him and then another guy. And like the last round I could tell he was tired and was kind of like clenching me up against the fence and was like holding or whatever. And I'm like, come on, Nick, let's go. Kind of like motivated him. He was like, fuck you, motherfucker. And started to whoop my ass.

But like, you know, the other thing about Nick as mentioned is like sometimes it's a the other thing about without, with Nick as mentioned is like, sometimes it's a lot better, which I agree with. It's a lot better sometimes to spar with people

you don't know instead of like your buddy. You know, you get, you go a little harder or you get a little more competitive with somebody you don't know.

And like when Nick and I first started, I mean, he used to be a lot more competitive with me and then now we're, we're pretty good friends. So I have to,

I find myself like talking shit to him or trying to piss him off or hit him hard to get him to to push a little harder that's interesting so replicates an actual competition more in that way than it does like light sparring with your friends right I mean I think there's different there's different times different stuff you know like some I'm at the point now where I don't feel like for I don't have to win in sparring I you know i can work on other things i can work on my defense i'll work on stuff whereas i used to be like i have to win in sparring if i lost a round in sparring i was really upset about it um but like nick uh how do i say this like with nick uh yeah sometimes he

he'll uh he'll coast or he'll with this camp he was coasting in some of the rounds or if I put him in there with somebody that wasn't that hard

he would like not do so well and would just kind of go at the level of the person he was going with so I found that

you know I would tell the people to hit him a lot fucking harder almost try to piss him off talk shit to him I tried my best

like Anderson Silva come on come on like impressions with when we were sparring. His kicking was a lot better in this fight than we'd ever seen it before. Was it, Joe? Is that all you? You know, there's a lot of people, interviews,

people, some guy, some interview guy, I forget who it was, but he was like, you know, how do you feel about this fight with Nick? You know, looking at Nate's last performance's last performance, blah, blah, blah. I was trying to compare Nate versus Nick. If Nate didn't do so good against Dos Anjos, then Nate. And I'm like, how the fuck? That's MMA math.

Two fucking completely different people. Two different opponents, two different people, two different weight classes. But yeah, a lot of times people have complained that both of them don't block kicks very well. Their understanding of kickboxing is a little different. So like for me as a coach, so to speak, in this camp, I was trying to put and bring in the best possible sparring partners I could for them. So I brought in Artem Levin, I brought in Chidi Njikwani who was sparring with me. I believe, and I got a lot of flack for this, I believe all three of those people are better kickboxers than Anderson Silva. Being that they're kickboxers and Anderson Silva is an MMA fighter,

so it's not a knock on Anderson Silva. I just think that those are very high level. Well, it's just a reality. It's a reality. You know what I'm saying? I mean, Anderson has had spectacular striking moments in MMA, but when it comes to his actual real-world kickboxing experience, it's fairly limited there's not he's had nearly as many fights especially in like world-class competition

but it was like you know uh Artem has a very like uh confident like uh head movement he's like a very elusive very sneaky which is similar traits that Anderson has, but at a higher level. I think I hit a lot harder than Anderson. I'm a little more aggressive. Things that I do well, translated well in Nick as far as the looks and the feelings. And then with Chidi Njokwani, he's got phenomenal movement. He looks similar to Anderson. He's got like four inch longer reach than anderson

but he has a very very similar movement patterns and the things that he does so my thing was you know and nick didn't necessarily beat any of us in any of that you know what i mean but he got used to seeing those the situations so that when it happened when anderson threw that spinning heel kick nick was prepared for it moved out of the way. Most of the kicks he blocked, Nick threw a lot more kicks than he usually does. Way more. His awareness of kickboxing had showed. I didn't know how the fight was going to go, but I felt a lot of responsibility as far as if Nick got caught with something, some kick or some kickboxing move, I felt like that was going to be my fault because I didn't show him.

Were you holding pads with him? I was holding pads for him, too. So you were working on his combinations. Like, that left leg kick was big. That was more... He landed more leg kicks on Anderson than anybody had ever done before. If you go back and watch Anderson's fights,

nobody landed like that. That left leg kick over and over again, he landed that. And I don't think Anderson expected that. Right. You know, Anderson stands southpaw expected that right you know anderson stands south paw so that right leg's exposed and and nick landed that left leg kick over and over again yeah uh there was something that we'd worked on was just him throwing kicks and being more

comfortable with kicks i've always tried to get him to kick more but it was something where um he's a lot more confident with his hands he's having more experience with his hands and then sometimes if you don't kick enough someone's's making you, forcing you to kick all the time in the gym. You get tired when you throw a kick. You know, if I'm used to boxing all the time and I throw one or two kicks, it's like going for a takedown and you're tired. Yeah. So I wanted to make sure that he felt good.

You know, we worked on some elbows from the clinch. I thought he did really well against Anderson in the clinch, especially if you look at, look at how Rich Franklin did. My goal wasn't to make Nick a high-level kickboxer. It was just to make him his awareness of kickboxing and his defense. I think it showed that he showed a lot.

No, it definitely did. Now, does Nick do any weightlifting? Does he do any strength and conditioning stuff? For this fight, he did, but again, it's not it wasn't that heavy, but he worked his this fight, he did. But again, it's not... It wasn't that heavy, but he worked his way up and he did start weightlifting for that. And I think he put on...

He still was like right around 200 when he was walking around for the fight. He was by no means like 205 or 210. That's still heavy for him. He might have hit 205. That's for him? that's pretty heavy though isn't it but yeah it is and i thought that like when the when fight week came and he cut the weight

he had a pretty easy weight cut i think he dropped like 10 pounds of water uh i want to say he got in the ring probably around 195 but like you could see he was definitely bigger than he was but it was like solid weight it wasn't like somebody blew up. Like when BJ Penn fought Machida or something like that. It was all sloppy. So is Nick going to compete again? What are his thoughts after this fight? I probably said it four times on this show, Joe. I'll say it again.

I really have no fucking idea what's going on in his head. I hope he does. I think there was some stuff that... One of the problems that we had in the fight was it was the first time I had ever cornered Nick. And when I was yelling stuff at him, he didn't recognize my voice. So a lot of the stuff I was saying,

he told me after, he was like, oh, that was you? And I was like, I wasn't screaming fucking Portuguese. And he was like, fuck. I didn't know if that was... That's funny. But yeah, I think we could do even better.

And I think he did great. I think he had some really exciting matchups for him. I'd like to see him rematch Carlos Condon. I think that'd be a huge fight. That would be a great fight. People would love to watch. I'd like to see him rematch. You know, Robbie Lawler would be huge.

You know, maybe beat Carlos, and then that gives him a title shot. Maybe he didn't get a title shot. I don't really know. I'm just guessing. I love those two fights. I think that would be fantastic. If he comes back after a two-year layoff or whatever it is.

If he does decide to come back, I think that's another awesome fight. Nick says he wants the big fights. He's obviously a marquee fighter. I think that there's a lot of really exciting matchups for him. Well, I think this fight only raised his profile. I think so, too. I think he did a fantastic job against the greatest of all time. I mean, it's him and Fedor.

Those are the two arguments of who's the greatest of all time. I mean, it's him and Fedor. Those are the two arguments of who's the greatest of all time. It's Anderson and Fedor. And, you know, it's one of those, there's no right answer, you know? Right. Fedor had some amazing fights in Pride, but the problem is those guys that he fought, they came over from Pride and they fought in the UFC. They didn't look nearly as good. So what is that?

Is that because Fedor beat them up? Is it because they're not on steroids anymore? Is it because they weren't that good in the first place? Is that because Fedor beat them up? Is it because they're not on steroids anymore? Is it because they weren't that good in the first place? Is it they're shop-worn? Visit the cage. Right. There's all these different questions. But those are the two guys that, in my opinion,

I go with Anderson mostly because I've seen him live and I think that the level of competition that he faces is probably a little higher. But it's an argument that I could see. When people say Fedor was the greatest of all time, I'm like, yeah, I could see your argument. I mean, I'm not 100% against it. But to go five rounds like Nick did,

being a guy who fought his original career at 155. Unbelievable. Amazing. I mean, he fought fucking Diego Sanchez at 155. He fought a lot. Sean Shirk, 155. And fights Anderson, 30 pounds heavier, and it's very competitive. That was his sixth or seventh fight where his opponent was either at one time a UFC champion

or went on to become a UFC champion. He fought six or seven of those guys in his career. That's amazing. That's amazing, right? Push that thing up to your face so people hear you better. Sorry. That's amazing. That's amazing, right?

Push that thing up to your face so people can hear you better. Sorry. And then when I was going through his – I was looking at the opponents and the strikers that Anderson had fought in his career, and then I was looking at the strikers and the opponents that Nick had fought in his career, and it was just for my own curiosity, but, like, Nick fought straight with his hitters at their best. Oh, yeah. Paul Daly. Paul Daly when Robbie Lawler was a and at their best you know oh yeah paul daly paul daly when uh robbie lawler

was a monster you know at his best when um or now he's got a new best i'm not sure but i think he's at his best now yeah but and chris lytle you know uh a lot of like really really good strikers when they were you know uh the japanese guy uh when he fought him in pride, Gomi, Gomi. Yeah. Jeez. Gomi was knocking the shit out of everybody. Yeah. So Nick has always taken those really tough fights and whether people love him or hate him, no one can ever say that Nick doesn't fought his way to get where he is.

You know, no doubt. It's really impressive. No, he's a very good, very good fighter. It's just one of those things where I just, I just feel like right now is a great time for him.

If he wants to like follow through right now, if he really wants to remain active and jump right back in, there's so many marquee battles for him. I would love to see Nick versus Hector Lombard. You want to talk about Craig? I mean, what the fuck would happen to Hector Lombard if Nick starts talking shit to him like that? It's a good fight, too.

Great fight. Hector's a monster. Matt Brown would be an awesome fight, too. Fuck yeah. There's a lot of really exciting fights for him at 170, and I'm sure there are some at 185 as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, if he wants to, there's some good fights for him.

You know, now that watching him against Anderson Silva, there's not really a weight class I wouldn't want to see him fight at. You know what I mean? Yeah. He was heavyweight. No higher than 185. He could fight all those guys. Yeah, I think he could go back and forth between 70 and 185 if he wanted to.

And it's funny that people are watching that fight and they're like, oh, Anderson, let's see Anderson retire. He's not the same person anymore. Nobody's saying that about Nick, and that's after a two-year layoff. It's true. Which is really impressive. Well, people are concerned about Anderson, first of all, that after the fight was over to watch him weeping like that is also one of the reasons why people are concerned about Anderson. First of all, that, you know, after the fight was over to watch him like weeping like that is also one of

the reasons why people are concerned. You know, they're like, Jesus Christ, like this is like the, the pressure on this guy must've been tremendous. Right. I mean, he's 39 years old. I've come back from a, from teen, from knee surgeries before. And like, that must've been such a really, really challenging thing to come back from all that and you know you know maybe he wasn't crying because he was you know i don't know why he was crying but i'm sure that was a lot emotional to go through you know and to come back after being knocked out and you know basically humiliated and then we're your next fight again you get your legs

shattered and you're out for another year you know yeah it's a lot a lot of pressure on somebody and maybe those are just tears of joy he was happy to uh or pride or whatever it was you know right well the second fight the what disturbed me wasn't even the leg snap i mean the leg snap was disturbing but i'd seen that before what disturbed me was how easy he went down the clinch he got clinched up and wide and hit him with the right hand. And it was like his body just gave out. I was like, I don't like that. Because if you go back and you watch Anderson's younger days, he took a fucking tremendous punch. You go back, watch him versus, was it Jorge Oliveira?

Yeah. And he gets cracked with Jorge Rivera. It was Jorge Rivera, not Oliveira. George Rivera. Yeah, Jorge,, not Oliveira. George Rivera. Yeah, Jorge, right? He called it whatever he calls it. It was a big puncher. He's a big puncher.

And Anderson stood in front of him and let him tee off on him. It was weird. And then he was smiling at him and then fucked him up afterwards. The Lee Murray fight. He got tagged by Lee Murray. And Lee Murray's a fucking murderous puncher. Fine. No problems at all. It's just one of those things where when it goes, it goes.

Yeah, that's true. And that was something else that we were looking at in the camp. We were obviously concerned of how Nick was going to react in the clinch with um with anderson after seeing anderson's fight with rich franklin you know and then watching the fight over again with weidman i was like i want you to punch from there just start throwing punches and crossface to get out of that clinch and you see how how easily nick was able to you know get out of it how well it worked for weidman and it was like with rich with with Rich Franklin, he had really no idea what to do there. Yeah.

It's interesting. Yeah, Rich was at a loss when it came to that. He's a very tough guy and a very well-conditioned guy, but I don't think he was the most technical when it came to certain aspects of fighting. But he came up in a different era. And that was my goal when it came to like bringing in the sparring partners and putting him in those situations rich franklin obviously is capable of doing a lot of different things in that clinch he just had never been in that situation his training

partners didn't expect it or what yeah and prepared him for that so once anderson hits with a few of those knees you're kind of fucked oh yeah yeah and then you know what you're gonna do makes if no one's ever taught you anything other was like, oh, shit, I'll leave you there again. And then it's yeah. Yeah. He didn't know how to control the hips. He didn't know what to do. And just, you know, that was that was he was new school. He was like the new era in like 2003. That's what Franklin was. He was like the new era of athletes, supremely conditioned. I remember they used to show on those uh countdown shows they show his training right you know his workout routine it was brutal yeah i mean nobody worked out back

then as hard as rich franklin he was huge for 185 giant is like what was that hawaiian league he used to fight in before ufc it was like a super brawl or whatever he was like 225 champion like he's a heavyweight he was a big guy big guy he's really thick and uh when he went down to 185 i mean he was uh it was a struggle you know the first few fights at 185 before he figured out how to dial it in perfectly it was a struggle it's a that's the weird thing about what we were talking about before the weight cutting like what went too much what's not enough yeah you know and then he you know he was the guy to retire Chuck Liddell on 205 so it's you know nobody saw that coming if you ever

thought that rich Franklin was gonna knock Chuck Liddell dead you know who thought that was gonna happen what a weird fluke shot not a fluke I mean obviously probably meant to do it but the way that Chuck went down it wasn't like you've seen Chuck get hit with way harder shots than that yeah that was just a sign you know like once you once it's gone it's gone He got tagged earlier in the round too that I think contributed to that He got he got hit with some big shots earlier in the round where you could see like he got dinged You know and Dana and I actually talked about it before and he said he felt like Chuck was hurt early in the round and

You know that was just the one that just put him away was the one that landed. It was crazy that Rich was, he hit him with a broken arm. You know, he hit him with the right hand, and then after the right hand, he hit him with his left, and his left had been snapped earlier in the fight. He didn't even, you know, just threw punches and didn't even realize it.

And after the fight, he realized, oh, shit, what the fuck's going on with this thing? That's a common thing in kickboxing though isn't it like blocking those uh kicks on the forearm taking kicks on the arm is uh there's a way you can do it though like a lot of people um and i was another thing i was explaining to nick in this camp is somebody along the line told nick to block like your holding pads this way so that's like exposes your this like exposes your your forearm like the bone on bone if you keep this inside you're going to take it on like the meat of the arm the meat of your your other arm and then you put one hand here so this doesn't hurt nearly as bad as going here there it's it's bone on bone and the shin's

going to win against the ulna or whatever bone is every time. It's so weird when you watch a guy's shit get broken, like the Tyrone Spong-Gokhan-Saki fight. Especially when a guy like Spong is just such a high-level kickboxer. You watch him throw a kick, and then you see his leg just go noodle, just snap. So awful. And then I think Jerome LeBanner had broke S saki's arm back in k1 once in the past too so well remember when gokan saki fought against alistair over him in the finals his arm was shot yeah that's what it was yeah he got hit and his his arm was fucked up before you know that

fight even started and he threw like one more kick and he's enough yeah he was done his arm's done yeah the bones there's just nothing nothing that makes them any tougher than you know you're born with a certain amount of bone density and you can lift weights and they'll get thicker and a little bit stronger but so someone was telling me that because usually um all of the guys that i can remember that i've seen where they're breaking their legs were always black guys. You notice this? Wow. And somebody was telling me that, I think you can Google it,

that there is a, there was actually a study done by it that vitamin D, I think it's D3, like something that we get from the sun, the darker skin people have almost like a filter of it, and they don't absorb as much as uh don't absorb as much absorb as much as it and but it was like corey hill tyrone spong anderson silva danny beal back in the day

like almost every person i can think of that had their legs snapped and kickboxing was was black guy i've definitely seen white guys online yeah you get their legs snapped and kickboxing i'm sure white white dudes are just as vulnerable i I think it's just a luck thing. Somebody told me that and I googled it and sure enough there was like a study done on it that it works like

your darker skin tone works as like a filter and you don't absorb as much. I think it was D3. That's weird because I guess you know the more melanin acts as like sunscreen.

Yeah, maybe it was melanin. Something like that. That's interesting. I don't know about all that. I couldn't believe it. Joe Rogan's like Joe Schilling is the most gullible. He just throws out facts.

That's what everybody does on the show. I do it all the time, too. But I think that like- But I did Google that one. That one is true. But African Americans tend to have thicker bone density. See, I think it was the exact opposite is what that said. Yeah, that's not true.

They have less bone density. They definitely have more bone density. Because in fact, African American women true. They have less bone density. They definitely have more bone density because, in fact, African-American women tend to have a similar bone density as European males. Really? Yeah, Africans have thicker bone density, in general. But you've got to realize that that varies

with strength training. Like when they do that with people, a lot of times you're not testing people that are lifting weights. When you lift weights, your bone density increases dramatically, especially with people who do like power lifting. You know, like their fucking jaws get wider. You know, their head gets thicker. It's because your body, your whole body is dealing with, there's a little bit of that going on too.

Power lifting has been a little bigger. bit of that going on too yeah power lifters get a little bigger but even if you're natural just carrying that you know just lifting very heavy things forces your body to go oh this motherfucker what are we doing with our body here you know your body's pretty adaptable man yeah i mean look at people that are yogis that can get in all these crazy positions and they're not born that way they're just slowly stretching themselves into that position you know and that's that's the flexibility of your muscles it's the density of your bones the the body will adapt to stress the more you give it the more it sort of try to conform to this new work that you're asking it to do right and then like kicking pads and like boxing for

sure our bones get thicker. Oh, yeah. Like the micro, whatever. Well, they also say when you're kicking, like shin on shin all the time, what you're also doing is you get these deposits of blood, and it fills up and calcifies, and all the bruises when it heals, those micro fractures and tiny, you're getting all this calcification. It almost leads to like a shin instep protector. Right.

You know, all over your shin. Like, did you ever see that fight in Lion Fight where Malapet just starts, he kicks this guy and you see the guy react. And so he just starts going shin to shin with him, just winging his shins. And I'm laughing at the guy because Malapet's shins have just been numb since he was like six yeah he's got over like 400 fights I think yeah ridiculous nuts but it's almost like he's got armor on his shins he's just smashing them into the other guy's shins and laughing at him while he's doing that because his shins all just fucking covered this this this layer of protection that's been built up like knuckles like those dudes those karate makiwara

guys right i had to go constantly does that fuck your hands up though because i would think that like i would think so i mean i used to tell him all the time like bro you wear we wear gloves wrap your hands what the fuck is the point of that shit like kick that thing if you're gonna do it like what the fuck are you doing you know but he was like on some like samurai type well um but yeah his knuckles would just be you know like just crazy calcified i mean my pretty big knuckles now too but yeah i don't i don't i would think that like your hand would not work properly you're gonna arthritis and when that's what i'm would be worried about the arthritis my friend john he used to do that shit he used to break bricks and those karate demonstrations and shit but he would always practice like hitting the makiwara and his uh which is uh makiwara is like this for folks who don't understand it's like a two by four

that's wrapped with rope and they they you know lock it into the ground so it's real stiff and they would pound this two by four with a rope until you develop all this calcification and all this um this uh calluses all over the top of your knuckle where it's like one big knuckle the first two knuckles become one big giant knuckle but does that help your hands i don't protect you from getting injured i don't i don't i don't it seems like it would i think most of the time the injuries that happen in boxing or in fighting is usually these bones. The small ones towards the pinky and the next finger, right? Yeah.

They're not protected as much, right? Well, like this is actually, if you break this and you go to the doctor, they're going to call it a boxer's fracture. It's that common that it's, I broke mine when I was a kid. But these are usually the bones that break. But usually they say like you want to hit with these two bones because these two bones line up up directly with your wrist right these two are like kind of on an angle so it's a lot easier to break these yeah yeah yeah especially considering like how your hands built like some people they have a more narrow hand maybe it would be more protected by the outside edge but mine sticks out on the side yeah it's like a weird thing man the hand's just not designed

to punch people. Speaking of which, Nick's is gnarly. Nick has this crazy knot right here on his... I just saw it the other day, and it was on both of his... What the fuck is that? Probably broke it and never did anything about it. Yeah, you know? Just nut.

Probably broke it, just let it heal on its own. It's like this crazy lifted up thing right here in the center of his hands. On the top of his hands. That's probably not good. That guy's got some scar tissue, man. He's got some scar tissue. He's been through some fucking wars. But look at you, man.

Looking beautiful. 31 years of age. I mean, if people didn't know you, they would never think you're a professional kickboxer. It's true. I've had a few. A few cuts and scratches. I've had both sides of my eyes, I've had cut under both eyes.

Never broke my nose, although Simon Marcus, in I think our first fight, he had slammed me, like tripped me, and like landed on top of me and knocked me. I was out of it. And I stand up and I'm walking in the wrong direction. The ref wasn't paying attention and said fight, and I just got blasted like two more times.

But after that fight, one of the things he finished me with was like a push kick to the face. And after that fight, like all of the cartilage inside my nose, like this ball or whatever, doesn't sit right anymore. It's like a little crooked because of this. Can't fix it. Does it breathe? Can you breathe out of your nose?

Yeah, I can breathe out of both, though. That's good. But it's like if I stick my finger in this part, there's space. And like this one, there's like a ball in there where he just kind of rearranged my cartilage. me a nose jump it's okay I knocked him out we're even well the last fight is the fight that's the most important right right you know if you'd knocked him out the first time then he beat you a few times you wouldn't feel so even yeah we were talking about taking punches I'd hate to put him on blaster no he after I was the first

person to knock him out he was 39 and 0 yeah super impressive record you know it was awesome but he just fought in China

I think a week or two ago and he got dropped like three or four times and finished like he couldn't take a punch anymore really it really affected his

ability to take a punch who knocked him out fan some Chinese guy i don't remember no shit look up simon marcus that's that's that's really incredible when you think about the fact that he did have that amazing record coming into that fight with you that fucking right hand that you landed on him was so perfect yeah it was so perfect to watch him fucking just drop like you got shot by a sniper you know in front of all the people in la you know it's i gotta i gotta tell you that before

that can't stop crazy is is fun until you have someone fucking yelling it over and over behind your ear while you're trying to watch the fights i was watching the fights and some chick was yelling can't stop crazy can't stop crazy like relax honey okay we heard it the first 30 times she literally kept yelling it while you were fighting you can't stop crazy i don't know what you're trying to get on camera yeah i don't know what it was that's awesome it was quite obnoxious i mean it was obnoxious but but awesome that you have that kind of support yeah it's awesome that kind of support but dude when he went down that place was deafening because it's in your hometown, in LA.

That was some wild shit. It was such an incredible. I mean, I'm used to, you know, before Glory came along, I was fighting. I mean, I had some pretty big, Lion Fight had some big shows when, at the Hard Rock. But for the most part, it was like Hollywood Park Casino, you know, 1,200 people. Right. To be at the forum and like walking out. Usually I walk out and i'm like

tunnel vision i don't see the fans i'm just focused on what i'm gonna do and like when i walked out for that like the ovation from all the fans was like it was it kind of choked me up a little bit i had to like take a breath and like blow kisses to the fans i had to do something to show my appreciation it was it was really overwhelming there was an awesome environment man the forum was so packed and it was so intense. And everybody was also recognizing that this was a big moment for kickboxing. It's like kickboxing. You know, I've been to a bunch of smokers.

I've been to some pro matches in L.A. and around the area. It was always very small. It wasn't that well-received. It wasn't that big of a deal. But, man, this was a giant deal. All the Spike TV cameras, you cameras you know everybody people being interviewed and the whole deal it was like it was there was so much energy behind it that like everybody was realizing wow this might and the fact that it's a big pay-per-view

card like this might be a big moment where kickboxing becomes just like MMA you know becomes like this next level sport because I know we said like when you look at the level of competition, when MMA became huge, the level of competition was not nearly as high as where the level of kickboxing competition is right now. The level is very high. Like the Nikki Holskins and the guys that are at the very top of the list. There's this level that's like a real solid world championship world class level

where the mma wasn't really there in 2005 when it when it emerged it's like it's like all the pieces are in place yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's like more so tough guys yeah they weren't the skill set yeah but well we'll go back to rich franklin i mean rich frank is a very good fighter but like the difference between like Franklin of, you know, the Rich Franklin that fought Anderson Silva and, say, like, you know, like Mighty Mouse Johnson, who's, in my opinion, like the most technically sound fighter. Like, that motherfucker is world class at everything he does.

Everything he does is perfect. You've got that, you know, like with Mark DuBont. You've got that with you. You've got that with the elite kickboxers of today. Whereas I don't think MMA had that when it started to take off. So if the promotion was behind it and if it caught on with the American people and the names started getting established, you know, Joe Schilling and all these guys and, you these these these names became more established and

it became something that became you know mainstream I just think like the the quality is there the product is there it's all just a matter of promoting it and getting people to that's the other thing that Dana said when I was trying to get them to buy it like way back in the day they're like you know what Americans were so poisoned by PKA karate that they just have this idea in their head that it's just dog shit. When guys would throw a bunch of flippy kicks

just to get the kicks in, and then you have to throw five kicks around or whatever it was. It turns into boxing after that. Yeah, it was a weird time. It just wasn't the same. It's like the level just wasn't the same. It's not like what you see today.

You know, like what you see today when you see they're throwing kicks because the kicks are effective. Like Raymond Daniels. I mean, that guy's throwing some wild, crazy shit. You know, Daniel Guida. He's throwing some fucking powerful fucking kicks. That's what's really exciting about the kickboxing. he's throwing some powerful kicks that's what's really exciting about the kickbox like if we were talking the other day about there's there's the heavyweight division in mma right now is uh it's lacking compared to the other divisions right when you look at kickboxing heavyweights

you got guys like daniel guida who's like 6 5 like 245 pounds, throwing head kicks, and has this punch speed of like a middleweight, you know, and Rico Verhoeven, like, the heavyweights in kickboxing, you got guys that are like 6'5", and they're still throwing head kicks, they don't move like Tim Sylvia, they don't move like these MMA guys are used to seeing, and it's just really, really exciting stuff, like, Rico Verhoeven is

incredibly athletic, he's a sparring partner with, with, with, shit, I forget his name, really high-level boxers in Europe. And then,

Ariel Zimmerman is just a knockout artist from the K-1 days. He fought all the top guys in K-1. It's just really, really exciting stuff. And Rico Verhoeven

is conditioning. Yeah. I mean, for a heavyweight, he's a lot like Kane in that sense, too, where that guy just does not get tired.

I mean, he will go five, five, or five three-minute rounds and be 100% through that. And that's where he beat Daniel Guida, I think. He started wearing him down. And then the conditioning sort of took in. I mean, he can fight at a very high level for a long time. And he's a young guy, too. He's got a bright future.

I mean, how old is Rico? I don't know. I think he's 20, I'd say 26 at most. Yeah. That's, what's it say here? And he's a huge guy. I mean, when you're next to him, he's huge hands. He's just a giant, giant man.

Yeah, I just hope it takes off, man. I really do because I think I do enjoy boxing. I'm a big boxing fan, but I like kickboxing a lot more. I will watch kickboxing fights over and over again. I will re-watch them, where I think the more elements you add to fighting, the more interesting it becomes. I actually kind of wish it was Muay Thai. I think that the clinching is an important aspect of it,

the tying up and the knees to the body and the dumps. I think that's an important part of it, the tying up and the knees to the body and the dumps. I think that's an important part of the art, and also the elbows and knees and the clinch. I mean, I think they're very important. I love a lion fight, you know, and Kevin Ross is your guy, right? Yeah, Kevin Ross is one of my best friends, yeah. I love that guy. I love watching him fight, too. He's a pure Muay Thai.

Like, you watch him fight every—I mean, the way he controls distance, the distance between throwing the kicks and the punches. He's doing everything the right way, where it's the right technique for the right distance. It's a beautiful thing to watch. You get to see the true art of Muay Thai represented when he's fighting. Absolutely. I think that's missing a little bit in Gloria. I wish they would go with the elbows and the knees and letting guys tie up in the clinch and throw knees to the body. I think their thought process with the clinch is that it turns into a way of stalling.

You can't punch with them. You're not as good at punching. You're not as good at kicking. So you just clinch them up and it ends up being like a wrestling match. But does it? I think that's what they're saying. I think they're silly. My two fights with Simon Marcus absolutely didn't.

Well, Simon Marcus, that is his style, right? That was one of the reasons why he beat so many guys. His clinch was phenomenal. Phenomenal. And he was so physically strong. Right. You know, how much of a difference did you feel fighting him in a Muay Thai fight and fighting him in Glory? I didn't really notice that much of a difference, to be honest with you.

I was in a lot better shape and a lot more prepared for the last man standing thing. But I think it also forced him. He wasn't able to hold on the way he wanted to and to do what he wanted to do. So I think it's unfair for me to say if it was, I don't't know that was a really good fight i enjoyed it it's great fight for you but i really liked uh and i always thought that uh glory rules with elbows would be really interesting like even if you didn't allow the clinch but you allowed elbows because elbows are actually my favorite weapon that's how i got my my ring name most of my first 10 knockouts were by elbow or from like knee to the head from the clench yeah

i think it's a great technique it's a very great technique i think i don't know why they don't do it honestly i think k1 they didn't do it because japan isn't like big on the blood thing you know so maybe that was why they you know they used to stop fights and wipe the blood off and all that stuff but uh yeah i really love elbows like if you look at guys like uh nathan carnage sure yeah he was like the elbow god with like beautiful boxing ability and then sneaking in the elbows. I'm a big fan of the elbow. Yeah, and I think that those guys, when they're fighting and kickboxing as opposed to Muay Thai,

there's like an element of their game that they've worked so hard to adapt and to get proficient at, and then that element's been removed. You're forcing them to fight at like 70%. Exactly. Yeah, and that's something that happened with Simon, you know, in that fight with me. I mean, that was his first fight, his first loss was his first kickboxing fight.

His first knockout loss was his first kickboxing fight. And then this one that just happened was also, I think, kickboxing or sanshao rules or whatnot. Yeah. Oh, it was sanshao rules? I think wing- Lang Fong. So San Chao were you allowed to throw takedowns and stuff? Yeah, I don't really know about I mean they call it it seems like San Chao, but they call it something that Wen Lang Fong

I did it once and it was horrible for me. It's actually when I tore my knee apart, but it was like you're allowed to Judo throw or like but but somehow they were at simon when he was trying to clinch and i don't really understand it what do you think about what john wayne parr is doing that cage combat thing he's got like he's he's like got muay thai but they're fighting in a cage with like mma gloves i particularly don't care for it i mean i don't like um i think it's i just see it as a gimmick over trying to tap into the MMA scene I mean like we just talked about

the cage makes it really hard to see um I don't think that you can clinch as well against the cage as you can in the ropes cause you can move them backward right there's more positions from it

right and I think it's more about like uh just attaching the gimmick or making it more brutal than you know thing that it is and I think a lot of guys

are uh breaking their hands. With the little gloves? With those little gloves doing it. I wouldn't want to do it. Defensively, it's a big issue, right? With the little gloves where you can slip punches through where you can't. You know, I thought it was going to be,

and then when I started training for the Melvin fight, I didn't find that much difference. No? Although, I think if Melvin had a boxing glove on it hit me on top of the head there it might not have put my legs out and i might not have dropped as easily as i did um i don't know if melvin would have went down from that right hook with a boxing glove as as dramatically as he did did glory adopt k1 rules just because k1 was like the big organization and k1 started to fall off and then it's showtime came along and it's Showtime put up some really big

fights and then glory kind of came along and took that over yeah I think that's that's exactly what happened I think that the from what I understand the guys K1 was K1 and then most of the fighters from holland were under one management team and uh when k1 started to fail that management team um had all the contracts for the k1 guys and they started it's showtime because they already had all the fighters under contract and then when it's showtime um eventually sold to uh glory the company glory. And then they, so it was just like the same people, same scenario. Right. It just grew from that.

And now it's, you know. So Lion Fight is the only like really big Muay Thai promotion, like national on television, national Muay Thai promotion in this country. I think Legacy Fighting just got, just made a deal. It was on TV. They're on the Access as well. Oh, they're Access too. Access too.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, Access is fucking great, great man which used to be hd net it's like one of the best accesses or best ways to access like up-and-coming fighters like the smaller organizations right uh i think uh yeah i don't get that channel i remember hdNet was on there. Then they had the MMA. What MMA shows were there on? Was it WEC was on HDNet? No, it was up in Canada. What the fuck is his name? Oh, God damn it.

I can't remember. In Edmonton. You know what I'm talking about, that dude. But now, and you remember Spike TV when the UFC was still on it and had the ultimate fighter that was like the kind of the home for combat sports and i know that uh spike tv is now uh rebranding i think in march and they they just signed um spike tv's rebranding like or re something like the change in the name no i don't know rebranding they're changing their revitalizing their look or something

i don't know they're trying to get back to being the home for combat sports. I know they just signed a deal with Floyd Mayweather's manager. They made boxing. They're going to have boxing on Spike TV now too. Oh, yeah. They're having like Golden Glory, right? I mean, not Golden Glory, Golden Boy. Golden Boy Productions is going to be on Spike TV.

I don't know if it's Golden Boy. It's Floyd Mayweather's coach. I forget what they're going to call it. It's Al Heyman is promoting it. So now they're going to have boxing, kickboxing, and Bellator MMA on Spike, which is really good. That's beautiful. Because that's their demographic.

It was all kind of geared around the Ultimate Fighter, and all their shows were the same, I think think from my perspective so i think it's great i think that you know the more the better i just think they should change the name bellator yeah it's a goofy name what do you think better what does it mean fuck is a bellator how do you even spell it is it one l i don't know when i hashtag it i spell it wrong almost every time I love the fights I love the organization but they should call it just Spike TV MMA it's mixed martial arts

everybody knows what it is it's true just why you know like when you watch boxing it's not you know Thunderfist boxing right

like why the name is the UFC like when it comes to MMA UFC is like NFL right it's got that it's like Q-tips

and Kleenex you know you don't want you don't ask for a tissue hey give me Kle's got that, it's like Q-tips and Kleenex. You know, you don't want, you don't ask for a tissue. Hey, give me Kleenex, you know, give me a Q-tip. You don't ask, may I have a cotton swab? You know what I mean? It's like they become names. Like I'll have a Coke. Like Velcro.

Yeah. It becomes like, I think Velcro is actually a patent. Isn't it? I don't know. But exactly. When my father-in-law's in the army and they don't call it velcro. It's called something hook and loop Yeah, hook and loop or something because well pro is a brand. Yeah Right. So it is the same thing. Yeah big but

That said MMA is what it is. Everybody knows it's mixed martial arts, you know And I think that if they just went with MMA, you know Just have MMA on Spike TV have the the name of the fighters be what's important. I think Bellator, the name itself is kind of goofy. And the fucking helmet. Why is there a Roman guy with a helmet? Yeah, was that, or did that come about around the 300 thing? Because it seems very 300-esque.

It is kind of. I think it's a Roman thing, the name. But whatever. Maximum Fighting Championship was what I was trying to remember. MFC, Mark Pavlich's organization, which is up in Edmonton, which is another good thing to watch. You see a lot of like Ryan Jimmo came out of there, a lot of young up-and-coming guys that are really good fighters

came out of these HGNet fights that they put on back in the day. So if Spike can do that and just make it like the home for fighting like every friday night boxing mma kickboxing people will get programmed if they just stick with glory i feel like it can't miss yeah it's just a matter of promoting it correctly getting people to understand like these these are the best kickboxers on earth and it's super high level it's not like you like they're just learning how to kickbox or putting them on TV. These are the best of the best. Do you think there needs to be more Americans fighting for an American audience?

Because I hear that a lot. I don't know. Are we that way? Some people. I don't know if we are that way or not. Some people are. There's a lot of us. I don't want to watch this Turkish guy because he's Turkish.

Just lie. Put a fucking American flag on a short. Send him out there. Don't let him talk. Don't let him talk. No, don't do that. You'll get caught. Listen, man, I know you must have to pee.

You've been holding on to that water. I do. I know you do. This weekend, this Friday night, folks can watch it. It's going to be live on Spike TV. It's Glory 19. And where is it?

It's from Virginia? Yeah, Hampton, Virginia. Hampton, Virginia. Hampton Coliseum, I think. It is a huge event. If you've never watched kickboxing before, let this be your first one.

And definitely cheer for my man, Joe Schilling, who will be fighting in the co-main event of the evening it's uh it's it's gonna be a big card for spike and a big card for glory and god damn i hope it's successful so let's try to pump it up set your dvrs watch that shit joe schilling much love my friend thank you very much really appreciate. I'm a huge fan. I'm fanboy geeking out right here, so this is great. You can follow Joe on Twitter. It's JoeShilling3 is his Twitter handle.

How come three? Who the fuck is one or two? If you find JoeShilling1 or two, let me know because I'm going to smack him around. I don't know how I got stuck with three. It seems like they should be able to take that over. Is there a guy that's JoeShilling1? Who's Joe Schilling? What's the luck?

I don't know. Oh, he's a basketball player for Duke. You dork. How dare you? He's only got two followers. Come on. What the fuck? He's not even really a...

God damn it. Joe Schilling. He's got two fucking followers. Two. Two. That's terrible. This is bullshit. Bullshit.

Take it over. I'm going to do it. All right, my friend. Good luck to you. We'll talk. Bullshit. Take it over. I'm going to do it. All right, my friend. Good luck to you. We'll talk to you soon. Appreciate it. Bye. Bye.

Bye.