The Joe Rogan Experience - #649 - Jonathan Gottschall

Episode Date: May 18, 2015

Jonathan Gottschall is an American literary scholar specializing in literature and evolution. He teaches at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania and his latest book, The Professor in the Cage, is available now. http://jonathangottschall.com/

Okay. Good? Good? Good. Alright, man. John Gottschall. What's up, buddy? Did I say it right? Gottschall? Gottschall. You got it. It's not that difficult. It just looks difficult. Right? Right? Right. The Fighter in the Cage. So, a professor, rather, in the cage. I got your book right here, and I was fascinated when I heard the concept,

and even more fascinated to talk to you about this. You decided to write a book about taking up mixed martial arts and competing. Yeah. What caused this bug? Well, I was working as an English instructor at a small liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania just outside Pittsburgh. And I was pushing up on middle age. I think I was 38 and a half at the time.

A half? Yeah. I don't know why and a half at the time. A half? Yeah. I don't know why I did that. That's like five-year-old talk. I know. I don't know why I did that. Yeah, I have some little kids in my house. Maybe that's why.

Me too. So I was 38 and a half at the time and I was sort of, I don't know, my career wasn't going that well. I had never made it onto the tenure track and it looked like I was never going to. So I sort of needed something new in life. And one day I'm at my office hours, and I happen to look out the front window.

And there used to be this auto parts store across the street about as far away as, you know, I could hit it with a snowball if I threw it. And this new business had moved in, and it was called Mark Schrader's Academy of Mixed Martial Arts. And I stood there at the window, and I could see the guys in the cage see him dancing hitting tackling rolling and I had this unexpected emotion and the emotion was envy I envied them they seemed so alive over there so courageous I felt like I was sort of rotting away you know in my life in my cubicle um and so I had this sort of funny thought into my head and thought was this a joke at my own expense and the was, wouldn't it be funny if I went across the street and joined them? You know, me, because I have this incredibly civilized job.

I've literally never been in a fight before. I'm almost 40. I'm not in very good shape. And then my next thought was, you know, maybe there's a book in that, a sort of nonfiction version of Fight Club. I'd go across the street. I'd try to learn how to fight. And along the way, though, I'd be asking these sort of big, deep, eternal questions about the role that violence has played in human life. Now, there's a difference between violence in terms of like, people perceive violence as there's being a victim. Yes. And that's the violence that I think that everybody has a problem with. What you're engaging in is martial arts, and although violent action happens in martial arts,

overall, it sounds contradictory, but it's not necessarily about violence. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think that's exactly right, and that was my journey. So I go, you know, when I'm first looking at the cage from across the street, I'm looking at it with all the stereotypes that most outsiders have about the sport. And to me it looks really, really violent. I assume that the guys over there must be of a screw loose. They must be savages. And so I went over there to test a theory. And the theory was, well, you know, there's a darkness at the core of human nature. And mixed martial arts is a perfect metaphor for

it, for this violence at the heart of human nature. Then I go over there and I find that my theory isn't very good. And what's happening over there is rough. It's often bloody and painful, but it's not really quite even violence. I agree, you know, because the emotions behind it are not angry emotions. They're not the emotions of violence or rage. You know, they're the basic competitive emotions. And it's also in order to achieve a very high level, you have to achieve something of a Zen state. And that Zen state can be fucked up by emotion. It can be tripped up. Your training can be tripped tripped up decisions made under the duress of emotion right the worst decisions right yeah that's one of the things that uh the instructor the main

instructor he's got named mark schrader warns us about all the time because guys get mad they get hit and they get mad you know it's like don't get mad it ruins everything you know you make bad decisions you also get tired tired you have to get mad yeah you get you also really get mad when you chase someone to try to get back at them. Right. Then you have bad management of energy. Yeah. There's so much involved in any sort of martial arts competition, any sort of martial arts training, that you don't see unless you engage in it.

Yeah. Yeah. It was tremendously valuable to me to do this because at times I thought, well, you know, I'm not the first writer who had the idea to go and get in a fight and write about it. You know, George Plimpton did it. Sam Sheridan did it. I know you've had Sheridan on your show. He wrote a great book about it. Yeah.

And a couple other guys. So I wasn't the first to do it. And so as a sort of publicity stunt, that's not really why I did it. I did it because you really don't know anything about it unless you've done it. Unless you've gone over there and gotten into the cage and been sort of locked up inside there. They literally lock you up in there half naked, you know, and you're with this other guy and this other guy is really scary. You know, he's a savage killer. And the only way to get out of that cage is to somehow survive these next few minutes you're going to spend with this guy. So there's an intensity to that thing that you know is there when you watch it from the outside but it's much different

to actually feel it to feel what's actually happening to you to feel what it's like to get punched in the face really hard um it was a tremendously educational experience to actually do it did it change the way like did you watch martial arts before that or were you like really an outsider when you did you watch any ufc matches or were you really an outsider? Did you watch any UFC matches? Dude, I've been a fan forever. Forever. But you still had some preconceived notions when you saw the change. Yeah, yeah.

I wanted to figure things out about it. Like, why do I watch this? Because when I first started watching it, I had a really good excuse. I was in my early 20s. It was about 1995. And I was a committed, but basically inept karate student. And the UFC was a tremendous education about what worked in a fight and what absolutely did not. And most of the stuff that I was learning in my karate classes absolutely did not work. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? And so I was not new to the UFC.

I was not new to cage fighting. But I had very much of an outsider's perspective on it. And I was confused about what draws people to these kinds of spectacles. What draws people not only to compete in the cage? That's an interesting question. But also what draws people to watch combat sports or watch other forms of violent spectacle? People who are decent, civilized human beings beings why do we want to watch this stuff now when you were practicing karate like how long did you practice for i was like maybe like two years and i gave it up because of the ufc i gave

it up because of the ufc yeah i went missed the boat when machida came along then all of a sudden people started practicing karate again well yeah it's true it's true absolutely as long as long as it's as long as you're mixing it into a system right rather than sticking with kai kushin karate which is what I had and so my school was very purist and when I said went to my sensei and said hey you know since a and very carefully you know you know this is there's authority in these dojos there's tradition that you question at your peril. And so I went in and said, you know, Sensei Bill, you know, I've been watching these tapes. I watched them on Blockbuster, you know, Blockbuster tapes of these UFC fights.

And long story short is guys like us, they're not just losing. They're getting slaughtered. They're getting massacred. You know, they get a couple of feeble punches off. They get tackled to the ground, beaten half to death. Right so I'd say to him, you know, what do we do? What do you do if you're taken down in a fight? And he'd be like, and he'd look at me and be, it's obvious, just don't get taken down. It's that easy. And right then it hit me that he didn't know anything about fighting. He didn't know how often fights go to the ground. He didn't know that not getting taken down is a martial art.

Yes. You know? And he didn't know that if you're not training for that, if you're not drilling, you're going to get taken down. If you haven't drilled ways to stand back up again, you're going to stay down. Yeah. So I realized then that we were like LARPers, live action role playing. You know what I mean? You know what LARPing is live action role playing. You know what I mean? You know what LARPing is?

No, but I do now. Well, it's like live D&D. You go off into the woods with your friends and you play D&D live. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's awful. But that's what we were doing, basically. We were LARPing as samurai. And so after that, I was pretty disillusioned and I gave it up.

I would have gone into it earlier, but it took a long time for MMA and BJJ to make it to my neck of the woods. It's been out here in L.A. and in New York City for a long time, but I've always kind of lived in podunk towns. It's only, again, not until 2010 or 2011 that I had the option to do this where I lived. So you had no jiu-jitsu until 2010 or 2011? You're still in the same place outside of Pittsburghittsburgh yeah yeah how far is pittsburgh from you pittsburgh is about a half hour but even pittsburgh pittsburgh had one bjj school um it but that was all you know there wasn't there wasn't there wasn't there was a fight club that had gone out of business an mma club that had gone out of business they're back now and henzo grace he has a school there now. So there is good stuff there now.

It's very difficult to make money teaching MMA. Very difficult. Yeah. You can do much better teaching jiu-jitsu or teaching taekwondo even or karate. I think that's right. I had a similar martial arts upbringing. Yeah.

I started out in taekwondo but dedicated my entire life to it. And then when I started kickboxing, that was my eye opening. It was before even grappling. Grappling was my second eye opening. My first eye opening was kickboxing because I realized, and then also just training straight boxing, I realized how terrible my hands were because Taekwondo was so kick-centric.

It was just all about kicking. And when guys are only kicking you, there's a lot of things you can get away with that you can't get away with when they're punching you. And I had this big enlightenment moment like, man, I've been wasting my time. Not really turned down in the long run because I learned a lot of things and I developed dexterity that's very unusual. Yeah, flexibility, but anybody can develop flexibility is the dexterity is unusual. Like the ability to throw kicks in positions and in ways that a lot of other people can't. And it's just because that's all you do.

You're throwing a lot of kicks. And so there's a lot of guys that took that style, like Anderson Silva is one of them, and started out as a taekwondo guy and then eventually developed all the martial arts skills, takedown defense, wrestling, jiu-jitsu and whatnot. But yeah, when the UFC came around, most people who are on the outside, they'll look at it like, I've had so many people say like,

that it's not martial arts, it's a sport, it's a martial sport. And there's all this silliness attached to it. But what they need to know is that no one knew when I was a kid, no one knew. Until 93, no one knew. They didn't know that it was so easy to take you down.

And when they did take you down, they would just break your arm. Like they'd strangle you in seconds. Like no one had any idea how vulnerable they were. I know. It was a shock, right? Wasn't it a shock? Total shock. When I watched, I mean, I remember seeing the first couple of them.

I watched them religiously at first. I'd pause. I'd slow down. I'd rewind. I'd watch them move and try to I'd pause, I'd slow down, I'd rewind, I'd watch the movie, try to etch it into my memory banks. But I watched with a sinking feeling like, oh my gosh, this is not at all what I expected. I started jujitsu almost immediately after discovering it. I found out about it in 94 or 95. I think I found out it started out in 93. I found out about it in 94 or 5.

I think I found out. It started out in 93, and I think I came out to L.A. in 94, and somewhere in mid-94, I found out about the UFC. And I didn't see the first one. I saw, like, the second one, and I watched it on video. That's what I did, too, yeah. Like a VHS tape. Blockbuster video. Exactly, yeah.

I used to hang out in that section of the video store. I still remember it. I would lurk there dangerously, like, literally. Lurking LARP. Well, I'd be lurking there like you're in the porno section or something. Right. Because it was like UFC videos, WWF videos.

Faces of Death. And Faces of Death was in that section. They were all lumped together. That's what it was with. Yeah. Yeah, I remember I was training at the Jet Center, which is a famous kickboxing gym in Van Nuys. It was right before it went under because they had gotten damaged in the earthquake, and then once rain came after the earthquake, they got massive flood damage,

and they eventually went under. But before they went under, that was where, when I first moved to California, I started working out. And Benny the Jet, or Kiedez, is like one of the pioneers of not just kickboxing but incorporating low kicks and fighting against the Thais and the Japanese with their low kicks and then fighting in sort of no-holds-barred tournaments back then. And Benny had this, his brother-in-law, I guess, Blinky Rodriguez, who's a famous kickboxer as well, would teach classes there.

It was a crazy environment because uh he uh blinky had some family tragedy involving gang violence so he had a lot of gang members that would uh train there and work out there so like like you'd have these guys like i remember this one guy had this really shitty like prison tattoo on his back that said like whatever his gang member was like la platas and then underneath it it said fuck the rest like tattooed big on his back like a 12 year old drew it in there I was like oh Christ this is where I'm working out and you know we take class to those guys and spar with those guys this is very disconcerting like you didn't want to beat up a gang member and they get shot in the parking lot but the

the the place was auzz about these tapes. People had found out about them. Everybody was like, you see this shit? Everybody's like, damn, this motherfucker just grabs people and drags them to the ground and chokes them. And everybody wanted to talk about it. It made no sense. It not only didn't make any sense, everybody was like, what are we doing here? What are we doing with our skill set?

Is this shit going to work? What if we went into one of those dudes? And so I went to Carlson Gracie's, which was gracie's which was uh i don't even know about it i found out about the gym from there was a show called i think it was called extreme fighting championships there was a a very small john paredi was the the the matchmaker and he was producing it i think it's called extreme combat stream something stream i don't remember There was a lot of extreme promotions. Yeah. But they had a montage, like a training montage thing for one of the fighters. And he was training at Carlson Gracie's.

And I knew that Mario Sperry trained there. And he was like one of the big guys at the time. And Marilo Bustamante was there. And Vitor Belfort was there. Before he made his UFC debut, I came in there right when he was making his debut. He had just, I got there when he was about to fight John Hess in Hawaii. And he fought John Hess in Hawaii who had fought in the UFC and beat the fuck out of him in about 10 seconds.

It was like one of the craziest fights ever. He got on top of him and just, I think he went knee to the belly on him and just uncorked about 50 punches to his face. Nobody had seen anybody like Vitor. He was a horrible monster. He's still fighting this fucking weekend, which is so crazy. Vitor is fighting this weekend for the title.

Madness. So that's, I just was, and then immediately upon going to Carlson Gracie's, I was just manhandled and thrown around like a little baby and strangled left and right. I was like, Jesus Christ, I'm fucking helpless. I had this delusional idea that I could defend myself.

But as a white belt in jujitsu, even with a year of high school wrestling, I kind of like knew how to wrestle a little. I knew how to like get on top of guys and then i get triangled or armbarred or guillotined and they take my back and you know i didn't know what the fuck to do with the gi the gi was ridiculous wrapping me up in that thing and just oh it was so humiliating yeah i'll never forget it but also so enlightening and for, yeah. And for you, going from this karate background to then entering into mixed martial arts training, like, what was... Well, I'd never been punched in the face, for one thing.

In all your karate training? No one punched you in the face? Mm-mm. We always threw punches to the chest. Because it's Kyokushin. Kyokushin, yeah. Yeah. Wow, so you never put i mean that's what i'm

saying gloves on and fucked around maybe we did but not for real i mean the level the the intensity of sparring at the mma gym was so much more intense so maybe we put boxing gloves on and and threw some punches but very soft wow and there was there's days at the mma gym where it's uh very very close to being you know a real fight in there often is a real fight where it's very, very close to being a real fight in there. Often is a real fight. Yeah, it's pretty close to being a real fight. Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier, who's also fighting this weekend, Cormier said, sometimes me and Cain spar and sometimes we fight.

Yeah. Well, I think he actually said that in the old days we fought. We always fought. Now sometimes we spar. Well, that's a big concern today. The big concern is how much do you take out of yourself in the gym? It's tough. How much is it necessary, though?

In order to prepare, to be comfortable in the cage, and to fight at your best, how much do you have to take out of your system? Man, it is a tough decision. Because if they go easy, they're afraid that their guy's going really hard all the time. If they go hard, there's a, I mean, what is it? It's practically a coin flip that they're going to get through to the fight without getting injured in some way. Well, one of the best gyms, American Kickboxing Academy, Dana White was just talking about how they train like cavemen, like they got to get out of Stone Age.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and they kind of said, look, you know, you kind of don't realize what's necessary to prepare for fights. But then you look at the amount of guys that get hurt there. It is pretty crazy. Yeah. But you look at the amount of guys that are really good there. Luke Rockhold, Daniel Cormier, Cain Velasquez.

It's like, fuck, you can't argue with that success. And it seems to me like there is no easy way out of this. I don't think you can train light. The problem is, like, other sports would have this problem, except they have an authority that governs it and makes everyone behave the same way. So the NFL, for instance, or the NCAA, like football teams, for instance, they're allowed to practice so many hours a week and that's it. Really? Yeah it's by rule you know

you're not allowed you put in your 20 or 30 hours a week and then that's it. You're not allowed to train on your own? Well I guess you could. That's the problem. And guys will cheat and go yeah. Well that's the problem with fighting fighting is a team sport? No. No fighting's an individual sport. Right. Cause anytime anybody goes well the people in the NFL

well people in the NFL first Well, people in the NFL, first of all, that fucking whistle blows and you get a nice juicy break. You know, you get to catch your breath, walk around offsides. You got that guy talks. TV timeout. He says a bunch of shit that went wrong and everybody complains. And it's a joke if you compare the amount of effort you have to put forth in an NFL. Sure, the collisions are horrific. Sure.

I mean, you've got to work out hard to be that fucking big and strong. There's no doubt about it. But as for, like, the life and death experience of being in the cage, fuck, man. No, I don't think anything compares to that. There's nothing. Yeah. There's nothing. Now, how did you start off with the beginner classes?

Like, how did you, did you start off with beginner classes? Like, how did you enter into this? No, I mean, basically this gym it's a small gym. You know, it's a small town gym. How many students are there? It would vary, you know, like you said MMA is a tough business. MMA gym is a tough business. And so it might be booming

in popularity as a spectator sport doesn't mean most guys want to get in there and start training. Right. Because it doesn't mean most guys want to get in there and start training. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because it doesn't look like all that much fun. Like opening up a base jumping school.

Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Yeah. So I think he expected, as a lot of guys who opened those gyms did, that the level of popularity as a spectator sport would track with the level of participation. So maybe, like, most nights would be 15 guys there, something like that. That's not too bad. That's not too bad, yeah. And did you ever have an issue with the guys who were more experienced beating up on the

guys who weren't? I mean, honestly, sometimes, but honestly not for the most part. You know, there's a very clear pecking order emerges in an MMA gym or any kind of martial arts gym, almost from day one. People have a very good sense, a very, very good sense of who would kick whose ass if it came down to a real fight. And so for the most part, the big guys don't bully or oppress the little guys. There's no glory in it. Right.

And the little guys also know not to antagonize the big guys. You know, they give them respect. They give them submissive body language. You know, one time I was going to fight or spar this big heavyweight in my gym. And we often had to spar out of our weight class because it is a smaller gym. So this guy weighs like 270 pounds. He's a competition fighter. I'm terrified.

And in the moment before the bell rings, I go right up to him and I hug him. And I bury my head right in his fragrant, meaty cleavage. And I say, come on, Clark. I got a family. That's all I said. You know? And after that, you know, he didn't exactly go easy on me, but he let me live. So, and that happens, you know, I was pretty explicit about it, but I think that kind of

language, that kind of communication is going on a lot at a gym. Yeah, it certainly is. It does in jujitsu as well like you'll see some guys that like as they're rolling they're just more submissive to other guys you know like when someone is more dominant it's like you there's certain things you don't even try yeah like you'll automatically go in defensive mode which is also very dangerous for the guy who's the best guy in the gym because you can get a very inflated sense of your abilities if you're always... It's like there's certain fighters that fought in lower level organizations and then came over to the UFC. And as they came over to the UFC, one of the first things that was clear was that they

had never faced another killer. Like they might be a killer themselves, but they had never faced another killer. And they wouldn't face a killer in the UFC. They'd be like, oh, this is what it's like to fight me. This sucks. And you would often find out, like, who's got it and who doesn't have it. That's true. At my gym, that's definitely true.

Yeah, they call them. The better guys there, I don't hit those guys harder than face. No way. Yeah, you don't want to. No way. Then you authorize them to hit you harder than face. Yeah,. Yeah, you don't want to. No way. Then you authorize them to hit you harder than face. Yeah, well, Carlos Condit said that once. He did this

thing for the military and did some sparring and stuff with some military guys. He's real clear. He goes, hey, man, we can have some fun here. Just hit me as hard as you want to get hit. Exactly. When you're that good and you can say, just hit me as hard as you want to get hit. Don't Exactly. When you're that good and you can say, just hit me as hard as you want to get hit.

Don't hit that guy hard. Trust me. Yes, exactly. Yeah. But that's, you know, it's finding that perfect balance of competition, but of also, you know, like you got to figure out how to not kill each other inside the gym. You got to compete and push each other. And oftentimes it's just a matter of just pulling back on shots, of not trying to knock each other out.

Because the guys who try to knock each other out, man, that style of sparring that just cannot maintain. No, I think it's really dumb. There are guys in my gym like that, guys who apparently can't pull the punch, either by lack of athleticism. You know what I mean? It's kind of actually a hard thing to throw the punch as hard as you can. There are a few guys like that.

And then pull it at the very last second. That's kind of an athletic thing to be able to pull off. And I would hate to spar with those guys. Yeah, there's always a guy like that. There's guys like that in jiu-jitsu, too, that guys would never spar with. There was this one dude no need to name names but at John Jock Machado's we'd all just get

away from this guy. Because if you sparred with him, if he caught you in anything he's going to fuck your arm up or fuck your neck up. He just would not let go and he didn't know how to not yank on things. And then there's other guys that were way better than him that you never worried about. Like you might get dominated, you might get dominated.

You might get tapped. Yeah. Like, if you roll with John Jock Machado, even if you get tapped, it's so controlled. Right. Like, you never get hurt. Right, right, right. You know, like, if he wraps you up in a triangle or takes your back or something like that, like, he's in control the entire time.

There's no yanking or weird shit or twisting that you didn't expect. Yeah. Those are, like like the dangerous guys. They're really strong blue belts. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, those are the guys in my gym too. There's guys that can't quite spar.

You have to fight them. You know what I mean? They're going to come so hard that you almost have to fight them. Yeah. And I don't want to do that. Are you still doing it? Are you still after you wrote the book? I did.

You know, this was a big thing that, this was the big surprise for me about doing this whole project was, again, I look at it from across the street. I'd always been a fan, but I never really wanted to do it myself. I wanted to do jiu-jitsu, but I didn't really want to be a cage fighter. It didn't look like fun to me. It looked like about as much fun as torture. You know what I mean?

It looked scary and painful. And the biggest shock for me was that I loved it. I loved it. So I expected to do it for a year and then to quit the absolute second my fight was over. You know, that's it. I'm retired. I'll go write the book. But I kept doing it for a couple years longer because I really loved it. I loved the camaraderie. I loved the challenge of it. I loved the way it made me feel. I loved the way it gave me this ability to live a sort of headlong life for a couple hours a week is all.

What do you mean by headlong? I don't know. I have this restraint in my life. I'm a professor. I have this really dull life in a lot of ways. And then for a few hours a week, I go in and I take these risks in the gym. And I experience these big emotions and these big highs, you know. And then about a year ago, I was so beat up that I really just couldn't continue anymore.

And giving up was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It was like, you know, I kind of felt like this romance in my life had come to an end. And I was too brittle and too old, you know, to recapture it. What was the issue, like physically? I always expected for it to end badly. You know, I knew I was kind of pushing my luck, and I figured I'd go out on my shield at some point, you know, go out on a stretcher after some horrible head injury or blow out my knee or something like that. It wasn't like that, though.

It was more like a accumulation of little things Rickety old man stuff, you know, just get older and you start picking up these little injuries and they don't go away So I got you know, but I kept getting turf toe from kicks and from getting stuck on the mat And that turned into arthritis at some point and I've pulled my groin bad and that's been bad and I messed up my neck one time and uh it's never been quite the same just just just got rickety and uh part of the reason I've started going to hot yoga as we said before uh is in hopes of curing all this stuff you know getting getting physically healthy getting my flexibility better so I can get back in the gym I don't ever want to do the the hardcore MMAarring anymore. I don't want to get hit in the head anymore.

But I do want to get back into the grappling elements of it. Yeah, we were talking about it before the podcast started that I've become addicted the last few weeks to yoga. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I just kept, I've got this reoccurring issue. I have a pulled muscle in my butt. Very uncomfortable to talk about. I have a pulled muscle in my butt.

Very uncomfortable to talk about. But it's aggravated when I throw kicks. And so I wasn't throwing kicks for a while. But there's certain punches when I just push off of it. It's just something about exploding. So I was like, man, I got to stretch out. My back's always fucked up. And so I started taking hot yoga about a week and a half ago. And almost immediately, I found out that it calmed me down like almost immediately

It was cool. Yeah, like my stress level just dropped tremendously I mean I had done it before but I've been real inconsistent about it So I'm trying to do four days a week for like a year. That's my that's my goal to yeah Okay, do on back-to-back days I often feel so tired from it on the second day, like muscularly tired. I mean, the thing that I didn't expect about yoga is how difficult it is. I mean, I knew it was like you. I thought it was going to be in a hot room stretching.

That's what I thought it was. You know what I mean? But it is. I mean, the level of exertion is really extraordinary. It's harder than a lot of jiu-jitsu classes. And people are going to say, get the fuck out of here. If I have to roll with five blue belts that are my size or do a class in hot yoga I guarantee you it's harder to do yoga yeah because if a guy's under my

level I could pretty much control what happens you know I could I could hold positions I could choose to take breaks you know I can mount them and just relax you know yeah he's like you can't you can't do that I know you're fighting for your life. No you get someone good If you're grappling with someone really good jujitsu is harder because it's fighting to the death you know if there's someone who's just just a little bit better than you or a Solid notch better than you and they're trying to kill you and you're you're constantly on the but it's they're not good enough that you're in total defensive mode right you're constantly on the, but they're not good enough that you're in total defensive mode. Right.

You're still in the game. You get to heart attack stages where you're like, this might end right here. This whole fucking life on this planet might end right here for me. It'd be a good death for you. It's not the worst death, but yoga is almost as difficult.

It's really hard. I was going to write something about it. I might write still a blog entry about how there's this life or death struggle that's going on these hot rooms all over the country. And no one knows how difficult it really is. Everybody thinks it's like really easy because a bunch of women are doing it. Exactly. Exactly. I think guys don't get it at all. Cause I'm always there. And it's, and I kind of like the female environment of it. Yeah. I like that. It's such a big transition from the from the gym you know where like it's non-competitive and the whole even if there's a male teacher the whole culture is still female you know it's like

uh it's a feminine culture like it's none of the macho stuff is going on right right you're not you're not trying to vanquish the room at hot yoga like you would be possibly if you were at the gym you know um and so i i just dig it and i think it's the main thing that people don't get about You're not trying to vanquish the room at hot yoga like you would be possibly if you were at the gym. And so I just dig it. And I think it's the main thing that people don't get about it. Because I would have had the same stereotypes I think a lot of people have. That it's kind of a sissy thing to do. There's nothing sissy about it.

It's really a hard thing. Yeah, it just has a weird connotation for some reason. We have this weird perception of it because we see girls in tights. Yeah. You know, we say, how hard could they be working? Exactly. That's ridiculous. I wonder if they're not, I wonder if I do get the feeling that I am working harder because I'm newer and I have to work really hard to get into these positions because I'm not, my flexibility sucks. And with these women, a lot of them are super flexible and they seem to get into those positions pretty effortlessly and hold them with less vibration than I'm holding them.

Some for sure. But some, I mean, there's this one lady that I go to this class and she's got to take a break like every other pose. She's barely getting through it. She's very out of shape and she's attempting to do this very difficult class. and she's attempting to do this very difficult class. And there's certain things when I do it where I'm like, fucking, I can barely hang in here until this guy calls it. I know, me too.

But in other ones, it's a breeze, where other people are really struggling. It depends on the instructor, you mean? No, no, no. Oh, the poses. The flexibility. Like, I have a lot of flexibility in my legs, like kicking flexibility.

And so there's certain poses where everybody else is struggling and I'm taking a break I'm like whoo I can relax here Yeah, that could do all that but the big one is like stretching my legs out putting my body forward Or with a lot of people they're holding it holding it. I'm like I can go to sleep here. Yeah, so nice I get little breaks now for me. I'm fighting. I'm fighting for my life in that position Yeah, and having that voice in my head is, you know, like, you can do it, pussy. Don't be a pussy. Don't be a pussy. But then there's other ones where I'm just fucking dying, you know?

It's really difficult. But, you know, again, I think there's a balance issue. And I think when you're all the time, all the explosion, lifting weights, kettlebells. all the explosion lifting weights kettlebells yeah i think it's good to do like static tension relieving long holding those poses stretching elongating the muscles stretching out all the tissue stretching out all the the hamstrings and the back muscles and there's so much so much stretching going on i realize what i'm doing and i'm like this is i don't ever do this there's no i never lengthen everything out everything is just getting compressed everything is yeah everything is explosion and all this

fucking heavy weight and there's uh I think you need balance I don't think it you should have only yoga like I think it's I think it's good to put weight on your body and your muscles because it's good for your density of your bones. It maintains mass. It keeps you from getting frail, especially as you get older. But I think stretching and yoga positions should be almost mandatory for people to get their shit together. You know, it makes you way calmer. And I don't know why. I mean, I wish I wonder if it's just physical tension being released or if just stretching itself, if there's something in the act of doing so that just when it's over, everything else just seems like calm and relaxed, like the difficulty of those poses.

Yeah, I always felt like it was just it burns through so much energy. You don't have anything less to torture left to torture yourself with after you know that the anxiety is kind of burnt through and no I had the same sense you do the first time I did I was like oh my god this is the healthiest thing I've ever done in my life how long you been doing it like I've done like 10 classes yeah so I'm still at that stage of like you know converts zeal you know oh yeah the blue belt disease yeah like just before you get a blue belt jujitsu guys just

don't want to talk about anything but jujitsu yeah so you want to do it to a point where you get healthy enough to go back to grappling yeah i'd like to get back into the gym yeah i miss i miss the guys i miss the it was a good thing for me you know uh anthony bourdain just kind of did jujitsu do you know i did that yeah i didn't know that yeah yeah it's amazing at 58 i know he loves it too dude when i met him that fucking guy he's got the blue belt disease he was he still smoked a few cigarettes when i met him drank crazily has he quit drank a lot yeah he quit smoking he quit smoking when he had his daughter um which was just right i guess right around when i was meeting him and um was just eating whatever the fuck he wanted to, getting a belly and drinking all the time

and traveling around the world. And his wife is a maniac. His wife is a jiu-jitsu fiend. But I see a guy like that, and I'm like, at 58 years old, how much can his body take? He's doing it like twice a day. I wonder if he's doing any yoga or anything to counteract just, I don't know, just age-related degeneration. Yeah, I don't know.

I often wonder about that myself. I wonder if, like, the fact that he wasn't athletic for most of his life means that he hadn't put a lot of hard miles on himself. That could be true. You know, like, right now, you've got a lot of hard miles on yourself. I've got quite a few hard miles on myself, you know. Yeah, I have a lot of fucking hard miles on this body. It's a lot of surgeries and a lot of injuries and, but it works amazingly well. But a lot of that is because I don't have a conventional job. I was thinking that today when I did that class,

I was like, how many fucking people have an hour and a half, you know, the middle of the day or at nine o'clock in the morning to go in there and, and, and, you know, stretch out in a fucking sweat box for an hour and a half. Most people just don't have that time. And then when you get home, you have your family and bills and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you have all this shit to deal with. Most people don't have the time to put in for body maintenance, for the proper body maintenance. That's very true. I was having a conversation with a friend about nutrition.

They were asking me, like, what kind of supplement should I get? What should I do? And I said, well, one of the first things you should do is find a qualified doctor and get your blood work done. Find out where your nutrition levels are at, what your vitamin levels are. Like, let's find out, like, eat what you normally eat. You don't have to get crazy and try to fix it, but eat what you normally eat, and then let's find out what do you need?

You know? Most people are like, oh, that's so much time. Yeah, they don't have the energy and time for it. They don't have time to go to the doctor and do the research. Yeah. It's a lot of work. It's, it's, jobs are bullshit. That's the real problem.

They're bullshit. I mean, part of what you were feeling when you saw those guys across the street and they were living their life, you realize that you were contained. Yeah, I was literally in a box. And the professor in the cage, the cage is the cage, it's a fighting cage, but it's also my office, my cubicle where I worked. And so the book is about getting out of that cubicle, getting out of my academic cage. If this thing sold like crazy, would you be willing to write the professor in the

mat and enter into jujitsu tournaments? Yeah, for sure, man. The professor in the yoga room? Yeah, absolutely. Adventures as a want-to-be yogi? Start a franchise, yeah. Now, what is boring about teaching English? It wasn't that it was boring. I don't know. You know. I was teaching a lot of writing classes, especially freshman writing. And freshman writing at my college was mandatory, which means that everyone there is a captive. At most college courses,

you get to take whatever you want to take. There's electives. You're not forced to be anywhere. This is a class you're forced to be in. And so I was teaching freshman composition over and over and over again to students who just couldn't care less. And so that was lame.

The main problem, though, was I was an adjunct. Do you know what an adjunct is? Yeah. An adjunct is like not a full-time faculty member. So for almost 10 years, I've been making about $16,000 a year, just kind of chasing this dream of being a boyhood dream, really, of being a college professor, being a scholar. I wanted to be that guy, like the guy who makes some small but meaningful contribution to knowledge. And I've been chasing that dream for a long time and writing books and writing the articles and doing all kinds of stuff. But it just wasn't, my research was a little bit non-conventional and it just wasn't I wasn't making it you know

what I mean and so and I just didn't have the courage to quit it wasn't I don't know if it's a courage thing or if it was a desire thing I don't like I don't like quitting on something I've invested in it's hard you know it's like it's like if you're gambling you know you throw money in the pot you don't want to fucking fold even though you know you should fold. And so when I started, when I went across the street that first time, I made that joke at my own expense. Wouldn't be funny if I went over there. Part of it, part of what was driving me to cross over there was a career suicide fantasy. I was thinking to myself, well, you apparently don't have the

courage to quit your job and move on to something else. Maybe you can do something offensive enough to people in your profession that will get you fired. Oh my God. And so if I showed up in the cage, everybody in my department would be able to, honest to God, like look up from the poems they were reading, you know, reading their poems, they look up and they'd be able to see me right across the street, you know, engaged in blood sport. And they don't really approve of blood sport in English departments what has the reaction been amongst your peers um okay career so I think career suicide fantasy right right so I went over there thinking I can't quit me begging myself fired on Mike on my campus people were much more tolerant and open-minded than I had hoped.

They didn't get furious with me. They didn't try to fire me. It's because they know me. They know I'm not a savage animal. They know I'm a decent human being. The bigger question is what effect will it have within the larger profession? Will it be an effective career suicide strategy once other people in the profession get a hold of the book? And I do think probably it'll be a success as a career suicide

strategy. About two weeks after the book came out, this article came out about me and about the book in this magazine that no one reads in the real world called The Chronicle of Higher Education, but it's the main trade magazine for academia. And the book comes off pretty much as a glorification of macho barbarism in their, in their, in their thinking, you know, a dumb, a dumb glorification of butchery and barbarism. You know what I mean? Butchery even, well, are you just using that word? Savageryery savagery and barbarism um sounds like it was written by a pussy just saying so there's a lot of that so that could be effective in ending my career because that that's a guy like i read about that and i read the article it's like i was like

i said my wife like okay that ends it there it is really yeah is it well written yeah well did guy have any points no i mean no i mean it's not gonna be well written well it's funny he's like he's a good writer okay you know what i mean but um it's not i don't think it's good journalism but it's good writing well it's editorial i mean i mean whenever it was yeah it was it was a it was a feature a sort of portrait and instead of instead of making an actual portrait he sort of drew a caricature in my opinion a caricature of you or of me and the book and the of what you're trying to accomplish or of the sport itself maybe one example so one example he quotes in the book is like we're at lunch you know

and we're having a nice time and and and at some point I lean across the table toward him and I say to him like this You know across the table in an intimidating fashion. Mm-hmm. What would it take? What would I have to say to get you to punch me in the face? That what you said to him really? Yeah, I said it to him But if you if you strip out all the damn context, right? So in context the you know That statement is about me saying how hard it is to get guys to punch you in the face.

Right. That men are fairly peaceable. Men avoid conflict. They're fairly prudent about throwing their fists around. Most guys will go to great lengths to find a face-saving way out of a violent confrontation. So within context, the statement was almost the opposite of what it made it seem like. Right. So in his words trying you were intimidating him and pretty much yeah well maybe that's just how he took it some people are super uncomfortable with

any idea it like any form of conflict you know and they they would like to categorize yeah any any kind of violent interaction, even voluntary violent interaction like a mixed martial arts competition as being barbaric, as having no virtue, as having no, there's no nobility. I get that too. And I think, I don't know if it's harder for you to get into that mind space, but it's not hard for me to get into that mind space. The mind space of?

Of a person who looks at that and sees no redemption and I think good about it I don't have a part. It's easy for me to get into it sounds crazy because I It's my job Yeah, I'm a mixed martial arts commentator for the UFC But I have a problem with I have a problem with the damage. I have a pro I Existence I was gonna ask you about this. Yeah. I mean, I love watching fights. I have always loved watching fights. I love that people have this burning desire in them to do what I think is the most difficult sport in the world.

I don't think there's anything even close. I think as far as the emotions that are invested in trying to win and the devastating effect of a loss and then the actual physical damage that you take along the way. Your vehicle that you're racing is your own body. And unlike a race car, your body will respond only if you push it in training. You have to elevate its capacity. You have to elevate its tolerances

and you have to do that intelligently. And it has to be done in the watchful eye of trainers. And along the way, there's all these variables you have to take into account, strength and conditioning. What kind of a body type are you dealing with? What, you know, what skillset do you have? What needs to be improved? Objectivity, objectively and analyzing your strengths and weaknesses, looking at your skillset, looking at the weapons that you have what needs to be improved objectivity objectively and analyzing your strengths and weaknesses looking at your skill set looking at the weapons that you have that you need to keep sharp and looking at ones that you need to acquire there's so many variables to me it's the ultimate problem solving high level competition i don't think there's anything like it but i have a problem with a lot of the ass i have but I have a problem with a lot of the ass.

I have a lot of a problem with a lot of the thuggish behavior. I have a problem with, uh, I mean, even though I know a lot of it is psychological warfare and trying to intimidate each other. I have a problem with some of that. I have a problem with the damage that guys take. I have a real problem with that. I have a real problem with guys not knowing when to get out with their friends telling them, listen, man, just got to put together one hard camp. You're like, no, no. He's been knocked out seven fucking times. Like, no, he needs to preserve his brain for the rest of his life.

Have you ever met an old man that used to fight? I have. It's not fun. It's not fun at all. It's very uncomfortable to talk to a guy who tells the same fucking story over and over and over and over and over and over. Do you know UFC fighters like that? Yes. Yes, I do.

And I know UFC fighters who didn't used to be like that, who are like that now. And they're some of my all-time favorites. Well, this is the big question for me. Let me ask one more question. The other day on the podcast, you mentioned Howard Cosell giving up that work after seeing a particularly gruesome fight larry holmes tux cobb yeah you ever you ever think that could happen to you um it's possible yeah it's it's possible that there'll come a day where i can't do it anymore that i don't want to do it anymore i'll probably always be a fan um to some extent like but like my favorite guy is mighty mouse you know people think like my all-time favorite guys are

Some of the craziest like van der lees-ilva is one of my all-time favorites because his fights were fucking chaos You knew if you're gonna watch a van der lees-ilva fight that dude across the ring and he's wiggling his Wrists back in the pride days doing this shit. He was he was probably one of the best middleweights ever um you know or light heavyweight in that division is 203 but uh they called it middleweight they called uh they actually called yeah they called the 185 pound division was walter weight i think um but vanderlei who was just the opposite of like Mighty Mouse. Like Mighty Mouse is my favorite currently because he fights so fucking intelligently. Everything he does, his movement, his footwork, his positioning,

he's always in condition. His conditioning is insane. He can just push guys to the point where they just cannot keep up with him. And his technical superiority over all the competition is just so obvious. And his work ethic, his intelligence. He's a great role model. When you hear him talk, he's a very intelligent young man, but also humble and friendly.

I mean, you see him. The only thing that tells you that guy's a martial arts fighter is his ears. You look at him, he seems so friendly and so nice, but then he gets in there. He's the baddest motherfucker in the world, pound for pound, in my opinion. Yeah, no, I think he's right. He's just 125 pounds. Yeah. So, you know.

He doesn't get the attention because of that. No. But, you know, other than that, Fedor, who is just violence. Every one of his fights was violence. But intelligence and violence. And Anderson, who is just a wizard. Anderson in his prime was the wizard of all wizards. Yeah.

He would pull off things where you just go, get the fuck out of here. What did I just see? My favorite has always been Machida. Machida's great, too. I just like, there's something, there's a beauty and grace to the way he fights. He reminds me of a matador. He kind of looks like a matador.

He's got that kind of dark complexion and dark hair. I think Machida spent too much of his career fighting at 205. I totally agree. He's too small for 185. Which is crazy. Rockhold dwarfs him. Rockhold's a giant.

And, you know, Weidman is way bigger, too. I just don't know how... And he's about to fight Romero, who's going to dwarf him, too. Romero's huge. Romero's huge. So he's taking abuse from these huge guys. Yeah. I just don't know how he fought at 205 for so long.

He would weigh in at 203 and not cut any weight at all and then fight Tito Ortiz. He weighed 230 or something, right? He's a big, giant dude. I mean, he fought Tiago Silva, who was huge, at 205. He fought some big-ass fucking dudes. But he fought very brilliantly. But he's also in his late 30s I think he's 37 or 38 and your body just you only have so many miles yeah you know there's just you don't you don't

get to change the tires yeah you don't get to upgrade the suspension he's taken some he's taken some abuse well the rock hold fight was the most abuse he's ever taken yeah I didn't like that fight I mean John Jones choked him out. Yeah. And when a guy chokes you out like that, that's not nearly as bad. Shogun KO'd him essentially with one punch. Yeah. So those were like two big losses before, but this Rockhold fight was a fucking molestation. Right. It was a brutal, I shouldn't say that word, I should say it was an assault.

Yeah. That's what it was. Brutal. That's what I didn't like about that fight. By the end, it was an assault. That's what it was. It was brutal. That's what I didn't like about that fight. By the end, it was an assault on a helpless victim. And I feel like you were saying this too, that that's a fight that should have been ended probably on the stool. I agree.

His corner should have ended it. Well, they didn't even put his mouthpiece in for the second round. We didn't know about it. He was saying something to the referee and pointing at his mouth, and I was trying to figure out what he was saying. While they were squaring off? We didn't know about it He was saying something to the referee and pointing at his mouth and I was trying to figure out what I was wearing off while they Were in when he was on the bottom and Rockhold was beating him up Yeah, he pointed said to the referee something and pointed to his mouth

That he didn't have a mouthpiece and the referee didn't pick it up I mean you got to check that the corners It's there ultimately their fault, but the referee fucked up too You can't let a guy fight and get the shit beat out of him with no mouthpiece in. Well, can we go back to that question about the conflict you feel between being a sports fan, a fan of this sport, a massive fan of this sport. No one's a bigger fan than you. I'm a

huge fan of the sport too, but also that sense of you know, dividedness. You know, that you know. I mean, here's how I feel about it. It's like, I feel like we're trapped in this kind of devil's bargain. You know, we you know, I mean, here's how I feel about it. It's like I feel like we're trapped in this kind of devil's bargain. You know, we love the sport. We admire the athletes and worship them.

We admire their heroism, their courage, their skill, stamina, all of it. And we love the drama of it. We love the savagery of it. We love the technique of it. But at the same time time we know it costs these guys too much and i guess my question is is there any way out of this devil's bargain is there a way that we can make these sports this sport safer than it is well um i think you and i are both in agreement with the gloves issue and you wrote something about it, and I discussed it with Sam Harris.

I've discussed it with a bunch of people. I feel like this would kind of be contradictory for people who don't train in martial arts, but I'll try to explain it visually for people who watch this, which is a much smaller percentage of the population. If you look at someone's wrist, your wrist, when you hit things, your wrist tends to wiggle around. It flexes. And it's very hard to keep your wrist stiff and hit things hard,

especially repeatedly when you're bouncing your wrist off of elbows and shoulders and even foreheads. You tend to break your hands much easier if you don't have wraps. And when you see a fighter in the UFC and they have those gloves on, those gloves aren't really protecting the other opponent in the UFC and they have those gloves on, those gloves aren't really protecting the other opponent, the opponent, the person you're punching, nearly as much as they're protecting the person who's punching the opponent. But the big thing to me is not just the gloves, it's the wraps.

I feel like when you tape up your wrist. You cast it. Yeah, you tape up your wrist and you tape up your hands. You make that thing hard as fuck. Before I work out, before I hit the bag or hit the pads or anything like that, I tape this fucking bitch down. I go in between my knuckles. I have these pads

that I put over my knuckles and I tape over them and then I go everything with athletic tape and at the end of it, that fucking thing, you can slam things with it. and it just it's unnatural Yeah, you get you you have an unnatural situation with your hands and When people say well it looks barbaric if you bare knuckle Let me tell you something you would be way better off with me bare knuckle punching in

Punching you then you would with me kicking you with my shin. And that's totally legal. Head kicks, heel, like when you see like Terry Edom versus Edson Barbosa, and Edson Barbosa, a wheel kicks him in the head. Yeah. There is not a fucking punch that's ever been thrown by a human being ever that has the kind of power that a fucking wheel kick has. Yeah.

Your legs are, I mean, especially not that weight class. I mean, you'd have to have like the biggest, most giant heavyweight boxer. And still, I don, especially not that weight class. I mean, you'd have to have the biggest, most giant heavyweight boxer, and still I don't think they could probably punch as hard as a world class kickboxer can throw a kick like that. Those kicks are rare, though. One of the things that was interesting to me is

there's a paper out in some journal, like the Canadian Journal of Criminology, not criminology, sorry, Sports Medicine or something like that, went through all the UFC fights over, let's say, a decade and saw how they ended. And when it came to KOs and TKOs, 85% of them were from the hands. So my feeling is, again, people have the wrong idea about these gloves. They really have the wrong idea.

They think it makes the sport safer. And they think it can make sport safer. And they think it can make it safer, safer, and it does make it safer for the guy's hands. And the cost of that is making it exponentially more dangerous for the other guy's brain. You take those gloves off, those guys cannot throw their hands around like that. If you glove it up, tape it up, you turn that fragile, vulnerable fist into a brutally dangerous cudgel. And you can throw around from all these different angles. You can throw Roy Nelson style overhand rights.

You can't throw that punch without gloves on. You'll break your hand. I mean, instantly, you KO yourself. Because the skull, if you punch the skull with a bare hand, the skull punches you back. Yeah, if you hit someone, if someone just ducks down, and you hit them with a straight punch on the forehead, it's like punching a wall. So to me, there was this tragedy that happened and it happened in boxing. It happened in boxing in 1867. You know, boxing was on the verge of getting outlawed basically for being savage. And they said, okay, we'll change the

rules. We'll add these different elements. We'll make it possible for the referees to stop fight, and we'll put pillows on the guys' fists. So it was a well-intended thing. It's a well-intended thing where, a well-intended humanitarian gesture. We'll make the sport safer by putting these pillows on these guys' hands. And the UFC made exactly the same mistake 130 years later or something. They were on the verge of getting outlawed. They were having all kinds of political problems.

And so they reformed. They said, well, we're going to outlaw these really brutal-looking techniques, and we are also going to take away the prime symbol in the public's mind of the savagery of cage fighting, which is bare-fisted fighting. Even in our language, when we say, we're gonna take the gloves off, that means we're gonna resort to a really primitive style of brutality.

And so it was a well-intended gesture that backfired in a tragic way. So people think that the sort of savagery and the damage and the danger, the neurological danger especially, of fightingagery and the damage and the danger, the neurological danger especially, of fighting is intrinsic to the sport and unavoidable. And it's not really true. You could massively decrease the danger, the neurological danger of the sport just by taking off the gloves.

But could you, because a big percentage of the blows that guys receive, they receive in training, and you're very unlikely to train bare knuckle. So you're going to still get tagged. You're right. You're right. There's also, it impedes grappling in a lot of ways. The gloves do. Yeah, of course.

They get in the way of a lot of chokes. You can grab them. They're handles. You can't get them in. I mean, you close your neck up. You can't get your gloves in some guys use them intelligently to actually finish jokes I've seen Josh Thompson who's a very clever fella He's done rear naked chokes where he reaches under his own gloves and chokes guys and and finishes it I'm not sure

The other guys glove you can't reach inside the other guy's glove. You can't reach inside the other guy's glove, but I think you can grab your own glove. You can grab your shorts. You can grab your shorts to defend yourself. You can't grab your shorts to finish a technique, though, I don't think. I don't think. I think if you had, like, there is a position that you could get where you could have your arm wrapped around a guy's neck and grab your own shorts. Yeah. And use your own shorts to aid in the choke. I wonder if you could have your arm wrapped around a guy's neck and grab your own shorts and use your own shorts to aid in the choke.

I wonder if you could do that. I wonder if you could do it offense. I probably should know this, seeing as I do it for a living. But I know that you can use it defensively, which is big with Kim Morris. If a guy's going for a shoulder lock and you reach deep into your shorts and you hold on to them, it could be just enough to protect you, to keep you from getting tapped. But I think, you know, if you take the gloves off, too, I've argued with some people about this.

They're like, well, if you did that, and guys would just throw more kicks, they'd throw more knees, they'd throw more elbows. They would. It would be a little more like bare-knuckle Muay Thai. Yeah, but I think, you know, I think paradoxically taking the gloves off would also weaken all the other weapons because it's really hard to kick somebody in the head. Not if you're Donald Cerrone. Well, but partly it's because they have to respect his fists. They have to have a lot of respect for his fists.

Yeah, but it's also like you get close to him, you get kneed, you get elbowed. I kind of disagree with that because I think it really just depends upon what kind of skill set you get into MMA with. If you get a guy who's a really good kicker and you take away the gloves, you just made his kicks better. Because now he doesn't have to worry nearly as much about the other guy's punches. He doesn't have to worry. That's true. That's a good point. I was thinking that the other guy, the defender, wouldn't be as vulnerable to the kick because he can look for the kick more. Because he doesn't have to beware of the other guy's fist.

But you're right, the kicker doesn't have to worry about it. That's a good point. One of the biggest problems with the gloves is the fact that the fingers are wide open and guys are poking each other in the eye all the time. It's a huge issue. The UFC has tried to figure out a way to do it, to mitigate it, to have the same gloves but make something where they curve more. I think Bellator came out with this Everlast glove that I think has two opposing benefits.

Like it's more curved, which I think is better to avoid some of the pokes like the old Pride gloves. Yes. But also it's got more padding on the top to protect the knuckles so they have less broken hands. But that means to me that guys can punch harder. So it's like you're more free to punch, but you're less likely to poke. I will take that. I'll take the less likely to get the eye pokes. Because I think the eye pokes, that's a huge tragic issue for people who aren't familiar with the sport.

Muay Thai, the art of Thai boxing, they have a very specific style of using the hands. Well, they'll put the hands on the forehead and they'll throw knees. They'll put the hands up and they'll throw kicks. They have a lot, especially in different practitioners, they have a lot of ways of using. But when they're doing it in the gym or in the ring, they have a lot of ways of using it. But when they're doing it in the gym or in the ring, they're usually wearing big boxing gloves. And the boxing gloves don't have anything free to poke. But fingers, in the MMA gloves, the fingers are completely exposed.

And when guys utilize the same techniques to try to keep a guy off them, they oftentimes wind up poking guys right in the eyes, and they cause irreparable damage. Guys like Alan Belcher, he's been out of the UFC for a long time. He had knee eye surgery, like significant eye surgery. Michael Bisping had significant eye surgery. He has oil in his eye, Bisping does. Yeah, it's terrifying. Dude, when you look at one of his eyes, it's a different color. It's like you don't see his pupil, and it's to protect his retina.

Yikes. But he's such a fucking gangster. That guy's still in there throwing down with one bum eye. I know. I wish he was. Again, though, like, win through these guys quick. Well, he's still world class, clearly, you know. I mean, he's still, he just beat C.B. Dalloway.

And he showed he's still world class. He's still, you know, one of the best guys in the world. A Kung Lee victory. I mean, that guy has a chance. I mean, he really does have a chance still he really has a dream and that dream is to be a world champion and that Mindset that he has that allows him to fight with one fucked up I you know throughout and he has got something wrong with his neck me. He's always like banged up. He's been fighting forever He's also been fighting clean and a lot of his major losses are from guys who weren't clean

I know even if they weren't legally clean. I mean if even if what they were doing was legal like Henderson and Vitor Yeah, they still weren't clean Chael Sonnen wasn't clean. I mean all these guys were not clean Yeah, almost everybody who beat him except Rockhold Rockhold is just a fucking freak of nature Yeah, freak of nature and a freak of training with Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier Every fucking day, you know, he's just so goddamn good and long and strong I don't believe how big and strong he was water to Machida, you know Javier Mendez was we were talking about it after the fight I was like goddamn I was congratulating them I was like that was insane and they're like, you know what people don't realize about him

He's he's fucking strong and it's very rare that you get someone who's real long but also really strong. I don't know what the fuck he weighs when he actually gets in there, but it ain't 185. He looked giant. Dude, he dwarfs me. I weigh 200 pounds, and I know I'm fat, but when I stand next to him, I'm like, get the fuck out of here. How are you 185? He's 6'4", and he looks like he's about 220 when he gets into the cage. It's insane I don't know how he makes that weight

I don't know idea how he makes that fucking weight, but he does it well He doesn't need to fight the other thing you know with the gloves you could talk about ways making this work safer That's that's another one. I think that you know the weight cutting issue is big. How do you stop that? It's impossible to stop probably but you but to me, the first guy to die in the UFC is just as likely to die in the sauna. Well, it's come very close. There's been a few guys backstage that fainted. They blacked out

and they pulled out of fights because they couldn't. Yeah, Hennon Burrow was a big one. That was a big one because a rematch with TJ Dillashaw, the fight was one of the fights of the year, one of the upsets of the entire history of the UFC. One of the biggest upsets. Spectacular performance by TJ Dillashaw. The fight was one of the fights of the year. One of the upsets of the entire history of the UFC. One of the biggest upsets. Spectacular performance by TJ Dillashaw.

Hennon Burrell trains like a monster ready for this comeback and then passes out in the sauna or the bathtub I guess and cracked his head off the wall and they wouldn't let him fight. He knocked himself out trying to get up out of the tub. I felt like that in yoga today man. I felt like I was going to black out. Did you really? No. No, but I mean he knocked himself out trying to get up out of the tub. I felt like that in yoga today, man I felt like I was gonna blackout. Did you really? No, no, but I mean it's like elevated by a thousand

Yeah, yeah, I do feel like I'm gonna pass out on the headstand I just I felt like I'm just I've realized what a bitch I am when I'm like grabbing my toes I'm like god. I need a break It's too hot in here and you think about like what these guys have to do in the fucking sauna to drop 20 pounds of water weight and that they do it every three or four months. Yeah, I did. I, I, I only had one, uh, actual fight. Um, but I, but I cut white twice cause the first fight I, uh, I showed up to and my opponent, uh, fearing the legendary fistic prowess of English professors. He backed out.

He backed out the day of? Day of. Oh, my God. I got on the scale and everything. I'm looking around. My guy's not there. I was scared. It's nerve-wracking to fight, but after you've gone through the weight cut, man, you don't want to not fight.

Right. What was wrong with him? He just didn't show up. It's a small-time amateur shows, and a lot of guys will say, hey, you know, well, this seemed like a good idea a couple months ago. But, you know, as it got closer, he wasn't hurt or anything. We had a guy from our gym that would have panic attacks, and there was a couple fights.

One fight where he almost couldn't do it. Like, he was just falling apart backstage, and he went out there and did it, but he lost. He got beat up pretty bad. But then another fight where he just pulled out backstage, day of the fight, getting prepped, warming up, wrapping the hands, the whole thing. I can't do this. I fucking can't do this.

Holy cow, really? You know, it happens at the UFC. It happens at the UFC and people don't know. You know, there's guys that wind up fighting and there's guys that are pretty highly ranked. I don't want to name any names, but Shaw, Brendan Shaw and I were actually having a conversation about this the other day, about guys that were warming up while he was back there. And they would say to their coach, I don't want to fucking do this anymore. I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. And like, dude, you got to fight in an hour, you know? But then they go out.

And they go out. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Well, you know, that's amazing to me because there's such, you know, part of the reason I fought finally was because of the social pressure. Like once you've started off down this path, it becomes like this thing where like you've told people you're going to do it. And everybody at the gym knows you're going to do it. So one time I kind of tried to back out, you know, like months before my actual fight. I said, you know, other writers have done this, and, you know, I'm all hurt. There's no reason to do it. And I went in and told one of the guys at the gym that I was kind of leaning away from doing it. He's like, well, so you're pussying out, huh?

And then I told another guy, and he said, well, so you're pussying out, huh? So everybody's kind of said that. And it becomes this huge pressure like to do it um and i felt like this uh i felt more fear uh of of a failure and courage than i did of of the sort of whatever was going to happen to me in the cage breaking my nose or whatever i felt much more fear that i would just find a way to chicken out in the end i'd get cold feet i'd refuse to climb the steps you know and get in the cage maybe i'd run for it in the end. I'd get cold feet. I'd refuse to climb the steps and get in the cage. Maybe I'd run for it in the cage, just sprint in circles

around the outside, jump over the fence, run for home. I honestly thought that could happen. So I can relate. It's kind of amazing that I got backed out backstage because there's so much at that point your whole the whole warrior society

sees you doing it you know what i mean the big blow maybe it's injured yeah you know sometimes guys are injured and then they get there and they realize like i can't fucking i can't move my leg right yeah there's a lot of guys who fight that's another thing a lot of guys who fight in the ufc that are fucked up they're really injured by the time they get in there. I know guys who have hid torn ACLs where their ACLs were completely blown out and they really had no stability. They would

try to move one way or another and their knee would just give right out. There's got to be nothing more terrifying than being in the octagon and competing against some highly trained, well-prepared killer. And you can't even move right. If you juke left or right, your leg's going to go boink.

Have you blown out a knee before? Do you know that feeling? No, I've never done that. It's the worst. It's not the worst. The worst is obviously way worse, but it's a bad feeling because you just know it's going to give out. You don't know when.

And you go to move left or move right, and it just goes boing. Yeah. And ACL is particularly, rather, because that's the big one that goes down the center of the knee that keeps it stable moving forward. And it can blow out. On a lot of people, it blows out. It's like one of the more common knee injuries. Mm-hmm.

Dominic Cruz, of course, is famously going through his second one, his third operation, second knee, though. It's fucking crazy. Yeah, it's awful. Yeah. It's real common, though. George St. Pierre got both his knees done. One of them blew out after his career was over

or after he stepped down for a little bit. Yeah. So many. Ronda's had her ACL done. A lot of fighters have had their ACLs done. It's probably one of the most common injuries

that fighters have in UFC. Any sport, really. ACL seems... Soccer, apparently, is the most common. Oh, football all the time. Basketball all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the human body is just fucking, it's designed to get you to like age 26 and by then you're almost dead. Sabretooth Tigers are looking for you to show up limping. That's true.

It's just shit design, man. Well, it's shit design for playing NFL football. For punching people in the head is a shit design? And it's a shit design for fighting for a living. You know what I mean? It's not made for that. No. You know, that's a bit much.

Well, when you see an NFL player, and I've only met a few of them, but when you meet them, it's like fucking, they're like giants from Game of Thrones. You're like, what? That's a real person? Jesus fucking Christ.

I remember one time I was in Phoenix, and we had just got done with the show. We did a comedy show at the Tempe Improv. And then we went to a bar. And when we went to a bar, there was this big line of people that were trying to get to this place. We're meeting our friend there. And one of these guys was an NFL player. And he just sort of, it was like a man amongst children.

It was just like moving through this crowd. He was about six foot seven. And he was probably 350 pounds. And he was so fucking big. Like you looked at him and you just go, Jesus Christ. You feel like a girl. I have a friend like that. He played

big time college football. And he was 6'7". 200, high 200s. And I'd stand with him at the bar and it was like, and I'd be looking at his tits. You know? And I'd be like, this is how you had to talk to him. I'm like, this is what it feels like for women. All the time. They're looking up over this guy that can just

do this. Except they get turned on by them and they want to fuck them. That's true. That's different. I hope you didn't get turned on. Well, if you did, keep it to yourself. But it's more worrisome. I'm like, is he going to try to fuck me? Because I hope he doesn't because I'll have no choice. Yeah, there's no there's no equality when it comes to physical attributes There's certain people that were just given a way better genetic roll of the dice

When I mean that's why we have weight classes. That's why mighty mouse can never fight john jones You know the argument can take place as to who's better pound for pound John or Mighty Mouse. And there's a lot of arguments both ways. But as far as like what would happen if they fight, there's no argument. There's no argument at all. I mean, John Jones is talented enough where he probably could fight and beat most of the heavyweights, if not all the heavyweights. I think he, yeah, yeah.

You know, this whole thing with him is so tragic. Yeah. It's so tragic. And, you know, more tragic for the woman he hit with his car, but so tragic for him because, you know, I don't know him well enough to know, like, where his mind's at or who he's talking to. And you hear all these bad things, like the people that he's hanging out with

and the people that he surrounds himself with. And you hear some of them from his coaches, so there's got to be some validity and truth to it. But for every guy like that that's super fucking talented it seems like it's so hard to stay on track it's like mike tyson had custom auto you know and custom auto was not just a great trainer but he was also a great mental coach like he had instilled lessons in Mike Tyson about fire and fear and all the all the different aspects of competition that are going to arise and how the hero and the coward feel the same thing it's just the hero reacts to it differently and then just the more you prepare

your body the less the less not fear but the less confusion you have when you get into that ring, the less doubt you have, the more clarity you have. You're 100% confident in your conditioning. You're 100% confident in your training. There will be certain fear, but you can mitigate some of that. All this was custom model just was a genius with Tyson. Plus, he was like a father figure. He was like a perfect example.

But Jon Jones had a father. He had a good father, but John Jones had a father No, he still does but what I'm saying is a coach you need you don't need that just in a father I mean his father doesn't have that out in Albuquerque with with Jackson I think he does to a certain extent but John Jones is so fucking good Yeah, the guys who train with him, the guys who talk, like if you talk to people, you're like, he's so good.

He's so much better than everybody else in the gym. Yeah. He's so much better than, when you saw him grab ahold of Daniel Cormier and wrestle Cormier to the ground the first round,

you're like, listen, this is another fucking level of shit you're dealing with. You're dealing with like another level of greatness. Yeah. Another level of ability.

And when you, you know, you see a guy like that get involved and i mean the cocaine thing man that didn't bother me that much it's like you know so he's doing coke three weeks out he's a bad motherfucker he wants a party you know that's how i look at it you know why because i'm not i don't look at this as like no i don't have a puritan no no he's like he wants to have fun would i get upset if he had a drink three you know three months out no so or three weeks out or with a fuck how many weeks was it? How many weeks was it before the fight about that sounds four or five weeks? Oh, but what I can't get mad if he had a beer don't Cerrone drinks Budweiser up until the fucking week of his weight cut

That's a fact yeah, and he doesn't just drink a little he drinks a lot. What's worse for you alcohol or cocaine? Well, I don't know how much John was doing, but a little line here and there is probably not as bad as the amount of Budweiser that Donald sucks down. That's true. That's true. I mean, I don't fucking know, man. I don't know. I think part of the issue that people have with a guy like John, who's just so uber talented and he's so young and all these things come handy to him or come so easy to him, young and all these things come handy to him is that or come so uh so easy to him is that when a guy like that professes to be like very moral and you know very religious and then you

see all this craziness like testing positive for cocaine and the drunk driving crashing into the tree with strippers in his car it's like yeah clearly he likes to have fun you know and there's nothing wrong with that nothing wrong at all it's at all. He's been part of the drill. Yeah, he's being dumb about it, though. You know, so go party, but... It could be that nobody can control... I mean, it's also like when you're that good, you don't want to listen to anybody.

You know, you're the fucking man. Except there's tons of guys in the UFC and other sports who keep it together. Mm-hmm. You know, George St. Pierre was awesome. Oh, he was very disciplined. But George fucked up, too. George St. Pierre was awesome. Oh, he was very disciplined. But George fucked up too.

George fucked up too. George totally underestimated Matt Serra. Totally underestimated Matt Serra. Got in there with him and got crushed. And that's just, you've got to dot your I's and cross your T's all day, every day. You can't take anyone lightly. I've seen that many times where guys were way favored over their opponent But they took it lightly because they were favored their opponent was terrified because they were the underdog so they trained like a demon and the other guys slacked off and went in there with a false sense of confidence and also a

Minimized sense of danger. Yeah, like nobody likes that fucking feeling man you and you went through it, right? That feeling of being the locker room. You're like fuck when is this over? Oh get me out there Yeah When I stopped competing that was the one thing that I appreciated the most like I didn't have to feel like I was always scared Yeah, I was always like waiting for the next fight You know the book the book is I say it's about the duel the duel You know the pistols at dawn.

Broadly defined. Sort of mano a mano. This is for you, man. Keep that, actually. Hey, sweet. Thank you. Nice little mug with my face on it. Think about me when you drink your coffee.

That's great, man. I already think about you when I drink my coffee. But, you know, it's sort of about mano a mano conflict of various kinds. And, you know, so an MMA fight or any kind of combat sport fight is kind of a duel. You set it up in advance. You have seconds who negotiate for you, work your corner and all that stuff. And you know weeks out, months out, even longer that you're going to be in a car crash at such and such a time. And it weighs on you. It weighs on you so heavy. longer that you're going to be in a car crash at such and such a time, you know, and it

weighs on you, you know, weighs on you so heavy. Whereas, you know, if you were to walk out in the parking lot right now and some guy picked a fight with you, that would be bad, but you wouldn't have the same kind of fear, that anxiety, that build up to it. So, yeah, I was glad to get that out of my life because I had, I lived with that for a long time because it took me a long time to get a fight. It took me a long time because I was old and the state commission makes it pretty hard for older fighters to allow a certain matchup and fights kept falling through or somebody would not show up or I would get hurt or that guy would get hurt. And so I live with

that sense that the fight was right around the corner for maybe six months. Did it fuck with your sleep? everything yeah i just lived in i lived with this mild sense of anxiety punctuated by these stabs of terror you know what i mean and that's when i would start negotiating with myself saying to myself you know other writers have done this before what the hell what's what's the point of this there's no there's no point in actually fighting you know you can you can train at the gym you can do a lot of stuff there's no point in actually having uh the actual fight so i was glad to get that out of the way and i was glad to get out of the weight management because that was the other hard thing about it so for those six months i was staying at a very

uh low weight what were you trying to weigh in at well i started the project at close to 200 pounds i was i was heavier uh kind of fat um and uh and then i you know so I could fight at 185 I could fight at 205, you know bulk up and you know Fight the huge guys But I decided to fight all the way down to 170 So I cut down to where I was walking around like 180 because of the amateurs You don't have 24 or 30 hours, whatever whatever it is to rehydrate how much you have We weighed in like at 10 o'clock in the morning for a fight that started at 7. That day?

That day, yeah. Whoa, that's dangerous. Yeah. Well, people don't cut a lot of weight. How much did you cut? I started cutting like the week of, like starving myself and mild dehydration. And by the time, like the night before my fight, I was like 176, I think. And then I got up in the morning and sweated it all out.

So you sweat out six pounds? I actually overdid it. It kind of screwed up because I didn't have a scale. I had no idea how much I was actually sweating out. Oh, no. Well, I had a scale, but you have no idea how well calibrated it is. But you cut weight and then fought the same day. That's illegal in most places.

Again, how are they going to know? How are they going to know? Did you rehydrate? Oh yeah. I was at 168.5 at WAM. So I actually lost like 7 pounds that morning. 7.5 pounds. And then I just

no IVs. No? No. No, I didn't. I wasn't doing a scientific weight cut. But you're a smart guy. Yeah, but I read up on it. But I didn't know how would I get a guy to give me an IV. Oh, my God. Talk to a fucking doctor.

Jesus Christ. You went through all this preparation and didn't prepare enough to find a doctor? Yeah, an IV drip is just water. There's nothing unethical about it. Well, they do it when you're dehydrated. That does not appear to be the culture of the MMA world that I was moving in. What do you mean? I don't know that guys were getting IVs.

Well, they're crazy if they're not. If you're cutting weight, you should get an IV. I still put every pound of those six pounds back on by the time the fight came out. You know, the issue is not putting the water back on. It's getting the water into your brain. Yeah. That's the real issue. All of the more significant deaths, brain brain damage all the big issues in boxing

almost all of them up to except for a few isolated events which were horrible beatings which is one i think eric perez was involved in one is it eric perez the heavyweight guy was involved in some horrible beating of this russian guy yeah and that guy suffered some pretty significant brain damage which is a heavyweight bout which is very very rare. It's usually the little guys. It's usually the people that cut weight. It's usually the people that cut weight, the Dukku Kims. And I mean, that's one of the fights where they made the weigh-in the day before the fight.

They changed it after that fight. They also changed it from 15 rounds to 12 rounds because, you know, people were realizing like, hey man, like this is fucking dangerous. Losing all this weight, you dehydrate your actual actual brain you make yourself more susceptible to brain trauma and bleeding yeah gerald mcclellan's another one who was a notoriously huge guy would cut a tremendous amount of weight to get down i think he's fighting at 175 was he 175 168 i forget what he fought at but Gerald cut a tremendous amount of weight got down fought Nigel Ben and and had like He was he was bleeding inside the octagon like or inside the ring rather

He had an episode where he like had a stroke Inside the ring like in the middle of his fight He had to take a knee and then just quit and realize something was way wrong And people like that can't I can't take a knee and then just quit and realize something was way wrong. And people like, I can't believe he quit. And then he collapsed in his corner. And, you know, the rest is history. He's all fucked up now.

And if you went back to the day, if you ever watched that guy fight, you've ever seen Gerald McClellan fight like back in the day? I don't believe so. Well, he was a terrifying fighter. And the big showdown was always going to be him and Roy Jones Jr. That's what everybody was thinking. Like one day him and Roy Jones Jr. are going to throw down. Jerome McClellan was a fucking killer. He was a killer, but he fought Nigel Benn and Nigel Benn was just tough as shit.

And they, they went to war and Gerald had them all but knocked out, had them knocked out of the ring. Like he went through the ring, got back into the ring, got back in, but just Nigel Benn would not quit. And there was a period in the fight somewhere where they collided heads, and that was one of the big ones. Nigel definitely landed some big punches on him, but they collided heads, and you could tell, like, after the headbutt, like,

he was all fucking woozy and whacked out. And then, you know, he had to take a knee, and then it was over. And he's he's blind now i think he can't hear he can't move he's all fucked up and it's all just from brain bleeding so it's it's a real issue the dehydration issue is a real issue not just yeah and you said you know earlier on you said you know how do you stop it and i think i think it is one of those things it's really really hard to stop because know, as you've talked about on the show, any kind of new measure you set up, there's a way to beat it. There's a way.

There's still going to be cutting weight. I think amateur wrestling has dealt with this. Little kids by body fat percentage things or maybe hydration measurements. Like you can measure how much hydration they have, so you can tell when the kid is cutting weight through dehydration. I'm not sure if that would be possible to measure hydration levels. That might be one way to deal with it.

But I agree with you. That one's a hard one to fix. That's why I keep going back to the gloves. I'm obsessed with the gloves things right now. Well, you're obsessed with them for a good reason. So why, I mean, if you agree on this after all your study, after all these years um and i agree on it why isn't why don't why do you think it's not uh happening because it's incredibly hard to change once these commissions have these rules and regulations in in place they're very difficult

to change once they're established they're insanely difficult to change. I think there's a bunch of things. Do you think the UFC would be against it or for it? The UFC probably would be against it in the current state. I mean, even if they listen to me, they rationalize like, oh, you got some good points, and then there would be a but, blah, blah, blah, we can't because blah, blah, blah. What would the blah, blah, blah be?

Well, first of all, people would think it's barbaric. So the optics would be bad. Public perception. Yeah, public perception. More cuts, which is probably true. There are probably a lot more cuts from knuckles. You know, knuckles. More hand injuries at first. Much more hand injuries.

Until they figure it out. Shorter careers. Yeah. It would shorten your careers. I mean, there are certain guys that have had, like, significant hand injuries. One of the reasons why, when you see Vitor Belfort throw all these kicks recently. Yeah, his hands are messed up. His hands have been broken seven fucking times. He's had seven injuries. One of the reasons why when you see Vitor Belfort throw all these kicks recently, his hands have been broken seven fucking times. He's had

seven injuries. Seven surgeries rather. I think my I think the major obstacle to it, if you thought it all through the major obstacle to it would be the upside of this is it would be a lot less neurological damage. The downside to it would be

there'd be a lot less neurological damage. There'd be a lot fewer knockouts. There'd be a lot less heavy, you know, the barrages of heavy punches. And they'd have to change their repertoire of punches. They'd have to go back towards a bare-knuckle style of punching. Much more straight punches, trying to throw punches into the fleshy part of the face that you're throwing with more control many more punches to the padded torso using these two knuckles as well using the front two knuckles

I actually read a bare knuckle boxing book they go back to the techniques of how it was done back then and they're not giving the two knuckle thing is what I always learn too that's what boxers teach what martial artists teach they're there they're saying it makes some sense they're saying this is a surface mm-hmm you turn it that way so you have more surface

area so you're not screwed you're not putting so much damage here and you say you know I've heard you know people say you know you're in alignment there but you're kind of also an alignment there it's not so bad either well the real issue like this too right the bare knuckle boxing what you're saying is they would throw it perpendicularly yeah instead of parallel with the ground throw throw a perpendicular punch into a boxing uh into a heavy back and see what it feels like you don't get as much power you're not nearly as much power yeah yeah and it's designed to be that way. Because if you throw... To preserve the hand.

Yeah, because your fist will just explode on contact. Yeah. Some people wouldn't have any problem with it. Some people with like big giant hands, like Brock Lesnar hands or Shane Carwin hands, those guys probably wouldn't have nearly as much problem. But if you can go back to the old UFCs and you see when guys fought bare knuckle, you very rarely saw like blistering combinations. Like you'll see like a guy like Vitor throw, you know, barrages of punches.

You very rarely see those because you just kind of can't. You kind of can't do those without breaking your hand. And they did break their hands. A lot. So, you know, I start off that article I wrote with a retrospective on, remember this fight, one of the greatest fights in the UFC, Hackney versus Yarborough? Sure. He bitch slapped him. So Yarborough was like a 600-pound single wrestler who's 6'8". Hackney's probably 215 maybe.

He weighed in at 200. 200, wasn't he? 200, karate guy. And this was the early Wild West days of the UFC where they're like, what'll happen? We don't know. Let's see what happens. What happens when a normal-sized man fights a giant? And long story short, Hackney hits him in the head 41 straight times, I counted, with his right hand. And at some point, he gets Yarbrough turtled up on the ground. He's hitting him from the back, and he's hooking him from behind.

He's coming in the back of the skull. You could do that back then. He's raising his hand up high like a blackjack, and he's like hammer fisting on one side and then hammer fisting it on the other, and he just screwed up his hand terribly. So, you know, Yarbrough walks out of the ring. He's fine.

He tapped out verbally, but he walked out of the ring looking no worse for wear. Those punches weren't all that effective. Hackney goes out of the ring looking at his fist, and it's swelling up, and it's bleeding, and that was the end for him. He didn't get to go to the next round because he had broken his hand. And so, you know, to me, it's this great illustration of what would have happened if Hackney had a glove on. He would have beaten him to sleep. Maybe. Probably. Big head. Yarbrough's a big dude. Hackney is a strong guy. Yeah. And he threw 41 punches at his brain. You know, and Hackney was putting, Yarbrough was putting up no defense. He weighed 600 pounds.

He couldn't get up. Yeah. He was stuck there on the ground. He's just laying there and getting punched in the head over and over and over again. Yeah, he's probably in the worst shape of any guy who ever fought in the UFC. Yeah. Maybe Aki Bono who fought Hoist Gracie. Yeah, and in retrospect, it looked incredibly barbaric because you're like, that guy should never have been in that cage. But people didn't know back then. Well, he was a giant sumo champion.

He was giant. He was somewhat athletic. He did some kind of athletic things in that match. He moved. Yeah, he moved. Step left, step right. Well, that was enough, yeah. It was 600 pounds.

Oh, yeah. He's chasing like a giant. He's got his arms out. It's like Frankenstein chasing him down. But he literally threw Hackney through the cage. He threw him out of the cage and down the stairs, broke the gate. Well, what Hackney did was hit him with an open palm. That was the first knockdown.

I think if he stuck with that, he probably wouldn't have broken his hand, which is kind of amazing. But for whatever reason, you can hit things really hard like that with the palm of your hand. Well, it's partly because you can't hit very hard that way. Well, you can hit... If you hit the... It's the same thing.

If you're not turning it over... Well, have you ever watched Boss Rooten fight in Pancrase? That's true. Boss Rooten figured out how to do it. Yeah. I mean, he was the first guy that really figured out. Pancrase was an organization. Yeah.

Pancrase was an organization, for folks who don't know, in Japan. And they didn't allow gloves. And they also didn't allow punches to the face. You could kick a guy to the face, but you were wearing wrestling shoes. And then on top of those wrestling shoes, you had this big fat shin and instep pad. So there's this big padded up shin thing. And then you had nothing on your hand. So the guys would kind of slap at each other and try to kick each other. And that was the rule too, right? You couldn't throw closed hand. You could not throw closed hands, but you could throw

closed hands to the body. But boss Rooten, who's a Dutch kickboxer and had this fucking power explosion style, he was the first guy that figured out if you just pull your hand way back, you throw that bitch just like a punch. And he would uppercut guys and hook guys, and he would beat, like when he fought Funaki, he beat the fucking shit out of him. And he beat him like a guy who was throwing punches. I mean, he would come at you with his hands pulled back like that,

and instead of doing what everybody else was doing, which was kind of throw these wild bitch slaps, Boss Root was throwing them straight down the pipe, and somehow or another he had stretched his hand out where he could pull his hand way back. So he was just palming your fucking nose into your brain. He was nasty. He was the first guy to figure out there was a different approach

you could take to this. He was also one of the first real strikers. You got to see the difference when he kicked guys, that fucking whack. You know, you can feel it in their arms. Yeah. You know, it's like one of the beautiful things about watching the UFC since 93 all the way up to 2015 where we are today is the evolution of the understanding of the techniques, of what's effective in certain positions, the distances.

And those guys like Bas Rutten were critical for establishing that stuff. You know, those real pioneers. There was fucking nobody before him and Pancrase that were fighting like that. There's nobody. He came along with big power in his kicks and ridiculous punching power and figured out how to do it with the palm. And then you see him fight in the UFC when he could use punches. Before his body started failing him,

he's had significant neck injuries to the point where he has significant atrophy of one of his arms. One of his arms he calls baby arm. He's had it fixed and had some stem cell stuff done and some operations and has discs fused in his neck and bad stuff. There's a cost to this, man. Fuck yeah, there is. But my point is you watch him fight against Tyoki Kosaka, TK, in the UFC when he won the heavyweight title.

And, you know, he was throwing fucking brutal combinations. And his neck was so fucked up before that fight, he couldn't even wrestle. He fought most of that fight or trained most of that fight just kickboxing because his neck was so fucked up before that fight he couldn't even wrestle He fought most of that fight Or trained most of that fight just kickboxing Because his neck was so fucked up But you know Don't I remember him wearing red boots and pancreas Probably

He wore a bunch of different boots But you could kick with the boots on Oh yeah you had these wrestling shoes on With these shin and step guards over the top of the wrestling shoes I thought he had like Big patent leather red boots on. No. I must be misremembering.

They were wrestling shoes. They were? Yeah, they were wrestling shoes. Pancrase had like an outfit that they would make you wear. You would wear like those little skivvies. Yeah. You weren't wearing like those MMA shorts that guys wear today.

Everybody wore like those little... Speedos. Yeah, little grape smugglers. And you'd... You know know it's it's a like an important time historically to watch those fights to see the difference between the way they fought then and the way they fight now yeah it's um there's still room to grow but the problem is you have athletic

commissions you have bureaucracy and you also have, look, I love the UFC. I love working for the UFC. It's been an honor to work for them all these years. But you're going to have a certain amount of stagnation when you have one group and one organization that's so dominant over the other ones. I disagree that it's a monopoly because Viacom owns Bellator and Viacom has untold fucking billions of dollars. They have an entire channel that they can promote it on. owns Bellator and Viacom has untold fucking billions of dollars.

They have an entire channel that they can promote it on. I mean, Spike TV has an entire Friday night lineup that's dedicated to combat sports, to boxing, glory kickboxing. I mean, there's plenty of eyes on Spike. And they're also getting guys from the UFC now. Like they have Phil Davis just signed with them. Oh, yeah. It's sort of the senior league for the UFC. And there's also, they picked up this wrestler,

this guy who helped Chris Weidman prepare for one of his recent fights. They're starting to get these big time names, guys that are coming up. And a lot of that is also because of the Reebok deal. The UFC has a Reebok deal that doesn't allow them to get their own sponsors. They have to use the Reebok

sponsorship, so some guys are shying away from it because of that. So like the concept of a monopoly, I just don't think it's fair. I don't agree that it's a monopoly. I think they're better than the rest of them. There's better competition. They're better organized. I think their production is better. The people that direct it and produce it are better. They're just the best at what they do because they've been doing it a long time but in having that like that there's a certain amount of stagnation because if someone came along and had a bare knuckle UFC style um you know mixed martial arts event where they fought not in a cage but in a basketball sized mat you know like he like if you have arena for basketball you have

this big gigantic space that you have a wooden floor, this parquet floor on. How about do something like that with mats and have mixed martial arts? And when they go out of bounds, you bring them right back to the center again and you have them duking it out again. I like that. Because the fence is starting. The fence is interesting. It hurts visually. You can't see that good.

Me, I can't see that good. I have the best fucking seat in the house for the UFC. I'm touching the floor that they're fighting on. Yeah, I see. Literally, touching the floor. I see you looking at the monitor all the time, too. Yeah, sometimes I have to. Sometimes when fighters are to the left or to the right,

and the backs, they're up against the cage, I have to look at the monitor. Otherwise, I don't know what's going on. I don't know if you ever looked at the crowd. We're all looking at the monitor, too. A lot of times. I mean, it's amazing to me. People pay for these good seats, and everybody's looking up at the monitor. Otherwise, I don't know what's going on. I don't know if you ever looked at the crowd. We're all looking at the monitor too. A lot of times. I mean, it's amazing to me. People pay for these good seats and everybody's looking up at the screen because the just shows better up there.

Less so with boxing. If you watch boxing, people are looking at the ring most of the time. Is it because of the ropes aren't in the way so much? Exactly. And in that sense, Pride had the better idea when it came to that. But it was too easy to go flying through the ropes. You know, they had a bunch of Japanese dudes outside that were, like, ready to press, keep you from going out. They had guys, like, would... Knocking your hand off the ropes.

Yeah, there was that. There was that. It was also, like, who was that? Was it Paulo Filho? I think someone used the ropes once to catch a guy on an armbar. Like, you had the guy, like, they were trapped inside the ropes.

The guy's arm was trapped in the rope while he was getting armbar. Like you had the guy, like they were trapped inside the ropes. The guy's arm was trapped in the rope while he was getting armbarred. And I was realizing like, whoa, he just used the rope to get that submission. Like this is kind of fucked. Like the rope came into play. It's almost like when Tank Abbott submitted Steve Jenim, he had his knee to his head and he grabbed the

fence and he was holding onto the fence and pulling and smashing him in the face. You know, that using the cage back back then like you can't grab the cage just like you can't grab the ropes and pride yeah but it did come into play yeah too well yeah it comes into play still too much too it would be interesting I'd like that because there's so much of the action now is pushed up against the fence I think if a guy grabs offense immediate one-point deduction immediate immediate one-point deduction.

Immediate. Immediate one-point. The problem is it's so reflexive. It doesn't matter. Most guys don't mean to do it. It's like, oh, you know, it's okay. But some guys do. Yeah. Some guys fucking grab that bitch.

They grab it. They should know. You should know. That's true. I mean, you got to know. You got to fucking know. And there's a big difference between a guy grabbing the fence when you're trying to take him down and then being able to stand up and then kicks you in the head and a guy not grabbing the fence and you take him down and you dominate him for the rest of the round.

And they seem like they're never penalized on it. No. They'll get four warnings. They should get an immediate one-point deduction. Same thing for obvious eye pokes. An immediate one-point deduction. And Dana has said this. Dana White has said this.

That might be the only way to stop eye pokes, to give them an immediate one-point deduction. I think that might work. I think there's got to be a way to cover the tips of the fingers. I mean, I don't necessarily think that these Bruce Lee-style gloves that were invented in Enter the Dragon are the only way to do it. Well, we have them at our gym. Some guys wear those, though. The Bruce Lee-style gloves. Yeah, those are cool.

But what I'm saying is something to cover the tips of the fingers. Because as a jujitsu guy, like if I had like, say like, you know those Everlast bag gloves? Yeah.

You know those style that come over the tips? Those aren't really going to impede my grappling that much. No. Because I don't do this and I don't do this.

You know, you never... You're not supposed to, yeah. You never, what I'm saying, I'm showing something obviously to people who are listening. Yeah, yeah. But interlacing your fingers. You don't do this. You know, you never, you never, what I'm saying, I'm showing something to obviously the people who are listening, but interlacing your fingers. You don't interlace your fingers. You grab in like an S grip or you grab in a gable grip and these grips that you do,

most of the really strong grips don't ever involve your fingers sliding into the grooves of each other, of the opposing fingers. But I feel like something like that maybe could work where the tips of the fingers were covered up and it wouldn't wouldn't affect you as much if you I poke somebody yeah um we're kind of like going into a dark territory here having this experience and I wanted to get back to your peers because we didn't I don't think we really completely we kind of got off track with that. Yeah having these people Stand outside and watch you do this was there

the the reaction vary or was it pretty Pretty uniform or was there extremes on both ends where people like what the fuck are you doing? And other people like I want to be like you I Don't know if anybody was saying I want to be like you. I doubt that. But I don't know what was said behind my back. You hear what Gottschall's doing? Jesus, can you believe this?

What a monster. But for the most part, people were cool about it. But they knew you. They knew me. And they knew, you know, and I made light of it. I always played it off in sort of a humorous way as a you know basically me being fed to lions right so but again the bigger the bigger problem is in the wider professional

people don't know me right um and and that you know when so when those sort of people get a hold of the book uh i hope they read it you know because the book is, it's not really even about mixed martial arts. You know, it's about using mixed martial arts as this bridge into big questions about human behavior, especially human male behavior and the nature of masculinity and all the dumb stuff we get up to. And it's one of the reasons, you know, I thought of you as I was writing the book, actually. You know, a lot of people write I was writing the book, actually. You know, a lot of people write a book and they don't have anybody in mind for it. They have like a vague, nebulous sense of who the readers are going to be. That never works for me.

I always have to think of an actual person. You know, who's going to read this book? Like, who would be the ideal reader for me? And for me, it was you. And I thought of you a lot when I was reading this book. As a person, like, who would be interested in the subject matter, charitable and generous about it, because these are things that you wonder about too. And also sort of meshes with not only your interest in fighting, but your whole interest in human behavior, and especially your basically evolutionary outlook on human life and human

behavior. That's what the book is really about. It's sort of an evolutionary exploration of the basis of masculinity and human behavior. That's what the book is really about. It's sort of an evolutionary exploration of the basis of masculinity and manhood. That's a very interesting way of approaching it because I think that's one of the issues that people have when it comes to the idea of mixed martial arts or the idea of any sort of combat sport is that in embracing that and supporting it or in even just pursuing it somehow or another we're doing a disservice to the idea of a cultural evolution that we kind of all agree is going on if you compare society and human beings and our behavior today with what we know about several

thousands of years ago we know that we're in a far safer time, far more civil time, for the most part, in most places of the world, obviously there's exceptions, but the people that are communicating now, we're communicating about, we have an understanding about what we would call, you know,

what the super progressives like to call toxic masculinity, man, you know, which part of me, part of me understands where they're, which, and part of me, I, part of me understands where they're coming from. And part of me also thinks that where they're coming with that, they're kind of copping out and they're denying there's denying certain aspects of their own life and their own masculinity that maybe they, uh, they feel are weak and maybe they feel like they can't compete in these areas and they feel intimidated. So they want to demean them. And I don't think that's right either. You know,

like there's some, well, masculinity is complex, you know, and it is there, there, there are things about it. So it's femininity, right? I mean, so being a human, being a human is a complex, uh, sort of thing. And there are, there is something, you know, there is a case to be made that masculinity run amok is the great problem of history. Oh, no doubt. That men's tendencies towards aggression, towards kind of silly forms of competition, towards physical forms of violence, you know, that's what's been the big problem all along. And even though the world has gotten a lot safer, it still may finish us off in the end. Well, that's the ultimate fear, right?

The ultimate fear is that one dick-waving contest will lead to nuclear war, and then we'll all be fucking knocking rocks together to start fires. Yeah, so plausible. Especially look at some parts of the world. They're like, they're fucking way closer than we are to Russia. You look at what North Korea has threatened to do to South Korea or what Pakistan and India, when they look at each other, other and you motherfucker I got a missile with your name on it yeah it all takes is the wrong guy with the right amount of power and that can happen and it's very likely

that we're saying guy for a reason it's not going to be the wrong woman yes you know and yeah there is a certain there's certain reality that but there's also certain reality to the fact that the reason why we have these thoughts and ideas and we have this quote-unquote toxic masculinity in the first place is because it served our genes well that's why we got to 2015 that's why we fought off the competition and unfortunately I think there's a yin and a yang to life there's a give and a take and there's an action and a reaction when it comes to aggression and when it comes to fear and danger. And that reaction is innovation, reinforcing the safer aspects of society, law enforcement. There's all these different

reactions to violence that lead to a better world. Yeah. And that's really what the focus of my book is. Again, I expected to write a book with MMA as a metaphor for this darkness, this blackness, this danger, this nastiness at the core of human nature. That's what I expected. I wrote a very different book than that. The book ended up being a book about something that I call the monkey dance. And if you've ever seen like a nature video of two elephant seals clashing in the surf or two mountain goats cracking skulls on a hillside, biologists call those sorts of contests, they call it ritual combat. And ritual combat is a way that a huge diversity of animal species have developed to figure out who's bigger, who's tougher, who's stronger, who's fitter

without fighting it out to the bitter bloody end. Like chimps grab sticks and they pull them out of the ground. They beat the shit out of trees with them more than they fight. Exactly. Yeah. So chimps have, and that's a monkey dance. And so in humans are animals too. Most people seem to like to forget this, but we're animals too. We're complex animals. We're cultured animals. We're animals still. And the monkey dance is my name for human versions of ritual combat. And it's a broad diversity of things that mainly men get up to.

Things like deadly duels and verbal duels, play fights among boys, and especially sports. And so a lot of these behaviors, the key thing And so a lot of these behaviors, the key thing is that a lot of these behaviors seem silly, they seem stupid, they seem pathetic, they're often volatile, and they are in danger of escalating to something truly dangerous. But on the whole, these monkey dances are a good thing. They're a way that men can work out their problems, thrash out their status hierarchies in ways that fall short of all sorts of violence. So the chimps are a great example of this. And humans do exactly the same thing.

If you're at a bar and you knock shoulders with somebody and somebody spills their beer, it's likely to go down like this. There'll be some sort of insult, some sort of challenge. Someone will feel disrespected, dishonored. They'll bluster back and forth, just like those chimps in the jungle. But at some point, one of the guys is like, I don't want to do this. And you'll say sorry or you'll walk away. And if you don't, it continues to escalate. The guys will close the distance.

They'll push, they'll punch, they'll tackle, they'll gouge. But we're talking about a totally different sort of situation than competition. When you're talking about bars, you're talking about social things. You're talking about carving. I mean, honestly, no one knows. When you bump into a guy in a bar, you don't know who the fuck you're dealing with. You don't know anything about it. It's a matter of a lot of chest puffing and a lot of posturing.

And that's usually enough. Yeah, sometimes. But what my take on it is, is that there's a big difference between that and what guys are doing to establish greatness. What they're doing to, when you achieve greatness in martial arts, what you're essentially doing by becoming a champion is you're showing a genetic superiority. You're showing a mental superiority, a character superiority that makes you more preferred for breeding. I mean, that's just the reality situation. Like I joke around about it, but it's kind of true. The only reason why anybody gets laid is because Luke Rockhold didn't get there first. I thought that was the greatest line. And it's completely true. It's so true. My wife would

have little Rockhold babies if she could. Nobody wants to admit that, you know, because nobody wants to admit that. No, man, my wife is not into that. It's not just the way he looks.

It's that he is that guy. We are. So we, we have an organic vegan garden together and we, you know, we're amazingly connected. Your wife wants to fuck you. Rock hole.

Just deal with it. No, I think that's right. I mean, when it comes right down to it, you walk around in the world wife wants to fuck you, Krakow. Just deal with it. No, I think that's right. I mean, when it comes right down to it, you walk around in the world and you see these differences between men and women. And you see physical differences. You see behavioral differences. And you naturally ask, you know, where does all this stuff come from? And part of it comes from culture.

There's no doubt about it. But a lot of it is biology. It's total biology. Women aren't showing up at hospitals trying to fuck dudes right before they die. They're not trying to pull their dicks out while they're coughing out blood. There's something about you. You're so vulnerable. I need you inside me.

That's not what they do. They're attracted by power and strength and character. And not just strength as far as the ability to oppress other people. We traditionally look at those things, or it's in vogue to look at those masculine characteristics as being negative oh yeah you know that you're you're oppressing others or the toxic masculinity handle no she's choosing a good hunter a good provider but also someone who can deal when the shit goes down some dudes they you know when they when they'll chirp all around about toxic masculinity or negative male behavior. But the reality is they don't have any fucking character.

And if something happens really bad in their life, they start weeping and they fall apart. That's unattractive. And the reason it's unattractive to your friends. If you have a friend and every time something goes wrong in his life, he starts crying and he wants a hug. You're like, Jesus, bitch, get your fucking shit together. Come on, dude. And that's how, that's how you're supposed to feel because you know that that guy, if anything goes wrong, that guy's not going to be reliable. He's not a good ally. He's not good to have in the tribe. And these are unfortunate, but realistic aspects of being a

human being in the 21st century. It, it's still there. It's still there I mean one day we might come to some point when we have so much control over the world that we live in that Masculinity won't be unnecessary and that's the case will probably evolve to the point where we look like the aliens that are depicted You know in every movie with the giant head muscle no muscles and the giant head that uses telekinesis to move things I mean, that's probably where we're headed. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, you're right. I mean, the world has gotten softer and softer and safer and safer, and we're still carrying this baggage, this evolutionary baggage of a sort of masculinity that's best suited to a world where, you know, there's barbarians at the gates and bears in the woods and all that stuff. But in this same world, there are avenues to express this masculinity where you can

be completely civil, where you can be completely kind, you can be a generous person, but get over your own genetics in a way. Give yourself difficult tasks to do. And even what we were talking about earlier, fucking yoga can do that. It doesn't have to be beating the shit out of each other in a cage to achieve this. But the victory over your own self. That's what it is, yeah. That's what I didn't know going in.

That's what I didn't know going in. I figured those guys must like beating people up. Some of them do, though. I think some do. Tank Abbott comes to mind. Yeah, and I think at the UFC level, maybe there's more of those guys, but you know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing this very small time amateur fighters in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Uh, 99% of them are amateurs. 99% of them have no hope of ever winning any fame or fortune. There is no fame or fortune

to be won. So why are they doing it? They're doing it because they want a challenge in their life. They want a quest in their life. And they want to do battle with their own weakness and their own timidity and try to defeat it. They're not dreaming about hurting people. That's the way to express it. Do battle with their own weakness. That's why we have disdain for people that pick on folks that they know that they can beat. Everyone's like we have disdain for people that pick on folks that they know that they can beat

If you see a guy and he's a bully and he's like a 250 pound guy and he wants to fight a hundred pound guy Yeah, why does he want to do that? He wants to do that because he's scared of a challenge because he's a coward Yeah, a real 250 pound man would never want I mean the only time you would threaten a hundred pound man is if that hundred pound man was threatening a hundred pound woman or Something or another hundred pound man you're trying to step in and keep the peace but when you see a bully like it's one of the most disgusting characteristics because we know ultimately it's cowardice it appears as strength yeah because they're flaunting their superiority yeah but it's really cowardice yeah and that's a thing otherwise they pick on somebody their own size yeah i mean there was a here's a perfect example there was a fighter that fell out of a card because he got injured,

and they offered this other fighter a replacement. And he said, no, I don't want to fight that guy. But then he listed off a bunch of guys that he would fight that were, like, way below him. And his idea was, like, hey, I have to change opponents in four weeks. I don't want it to be difficult. And everybody was like, Bill! Like the opponents in four weeks I don't want it to be difficult like and everybody was like bill like the mixed martial arts the underground forum there's fucking awash with people angry yeah and they're

right they are right they are right you know either you're willing to fight another top contender who's just as capable of beating you as you are of him or we're wasting fucking time here yeah you know and we don't want to watch that you got to understand like what did you sign up to do you signed up to be a fucking gladiator okay you signed up to be the most noble of all martial arts combatants of all time you're competing at the highest level we've ever achieved in martial art today make no mistake about it the fighters of today are the highest skilled the most competent martial artists that have ever existed. There's been some great judokas of the past.

There's been some great taekwondo competitors and great Muay Thai fighters. But as far as the overall combination in the form of a mixed martial artist, today, they're the best that they've ever been. No doubt about it. By orders of magnitude. Yeah, I mean, I'm a student of this. I mean, a lifelong student. I've been deeply involved in martial arts since I was 14 years old. So I've seen all the levels.

I've seen the difference. There's a difference between someone who is doing it to achieve greatness and a difference to someone who's doing it to achieve greatness and a difference is someone who's like barely getting by and they're really physically talented and they they train really hard but they're fucking terrified of a real challenge and those guys exist and they exist even at a very high level yeah because their company come from really good camps they're really well trained they have you know they have a bunch of success under their belt but they're always

terrified of the one guy who's going to expose them. It's one of the most fascinating aspects. It's also bad business to lose. Yes. You know, so the boxers, you know, are notorious for padding their records and fighting tomato cans. Well, there's also there's some guys that fold under pressure. things about Jon Jones is that Jon Jones has overcome adversity in his career you know in a very very obvious character defining way like a good example is the fight with Gustafson if you talk to the people that are in John's camp they'll

tell you like he barely trained for that fight barely trained for him but gutted it out in those last rounds and and his title. The Vitor Belfort fight is another perfect example. Vitor caught him in a fucking deep arm bar. His arm was totally hyperextended. 99% of the population on this planet plus would tap. I'm tapping just thinking about it. Yeah. I mean, it was fucked up. His elbow was fucked up for a long time after that too, which is one of the reasons why he had to coach the ultimate fighter and wound up you know going through that because he really couldn't compete

it was jacked his elbow was fucking jacked but he wouldn't tap he wouldn't tap and he went on to win that fight and he went on to win it by submission you know he submitted a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Vitor Belfort I just think that that quality is something that is almost impossible

to teach. You either have it or you don't. Maybe you can gain it. If you didn't have it, maybe you can put up these boundaries in your mind where you won't quit anymore. You won't allow you to anymore. I'm sure there's some

native element to it. Some people are born tough and born with that kind of character. I don't know if it's born. I think it's developed over the course of the adversity that you face in your life. I think that's right. That was one of the big findings for me at the gym. You go into the gym and it's like,

what's a fighter? For most people, I think most people think a fighter is a person who's strong and fit and has developed this toolkit of you know all these sophisticated techniques and all that stuff but you talk to fighters they don't define a fighter that way they define a fighter as you know a person who's really tough and who will fight and who's game in a fight um and that was one thing that i found sort of interesting going in because one of my one of the things I wanted

about was whether I'd be able to do it, just go in there and square off with people. I didn't think I was ever going to be good at it, but could I just, could I compete bravely? And I do think that you do build your character by doing it. You do get stronger and tougher and braver through the process of, you know, of training. No, I think so too. I think there's no doubt about that. I think there's also, it's curious to me that there's a bunch of people that are fight fans that are, and even fighters, that don't respect people that don't put themselves at risk.

Like a Floyd Mayweather is a perfect example. No, I don't get that at all. I don't get it at all either. I look at Floyd Mayweather is a perfect example. No, I don't get that at all. I don't get it at all either. I look at Floyd Mayweather and I see a genius. I see a guy who's obviously troubled in his personal life and his treatment of women is atrocious and all the above. I mean, he's got all these arrests for domestic violence. I mean, where there's smoke, there's fire, right?

Spent time in jail for that. Or he's hanging out with chicks that Everyone and anyone would smack that's a possibility too that nobody wants to take into consideration I mean you're hanging around with that dude. I mean, why are you hanging around with that dude? I mean, you know what you attracted to him was it well. He's rich. Yeah, is that what it is? Who knows who knows what what the variables are but it's what's undeniable. Okay. I don't know him I don't want to judge his character. What's undeniable about what't know him, I don't want to judge his character What's undeniable about what you can View is inside the ring

He's a fucking genius He's brilliant, the way he gets guys To dance to his tune He slows punchers down, he slows volume Punchers down dramatically He gets them to second Guess what they're doing, he gets them Off their game, he lights

Them up, he tags them, he clinches them He just fights brilliantly Gets them to second guess what they're doing. He gets them off their game. He lights them up. He tags them. He clinches them. He just fights brilliantly. The whole point of fighting is to do damage without getting damaged. He doesn't do that much damage. That's why people get crazy. He does a little bit of damage, but more than anybody else.

He scores. Yeah. But in doing so, he's beat the fucking game. Yeah. I mean, he's 48-0, and he's never been knocked down. He's never been stopped. He's never and oh and he's never been knocked down he's never been stopped he's never been really hurt he's been knocked down maybe he's been knocked down he might have been knocked down like early in his career well I think people were reacting there not to the lack of you know carnage I think they react to the lack of drama you know people are

you know people are attracted to fighting sports I I think, for a lot of reasons. You know, there's probably a creature in us that kind of likes violence. But there's also this sort of drama to a fight that's hard. I mean, with that fight, you have these two guys. You have the good guy. You have the face. You have the heel squaring off in this incredibly climactic showdown that's going to define the story of their entire careers. And you're expecting some sort of epic battle to go down that's going to be incredibly gripping drama.

And then as a sort of dramatic spectacle, I think it sort of fell flat, which is why that's my sort of theory for why the reaction to the fight was so negative. Yeah, I guess, man. the fight was so negative yeah i guess man i mean just when you're dealing with two of the best boxers of any generation who i think manny pacquiao i think it's safe to say that 95 of them don't know anything about boxing that is a problem boxing fans yeah that's what roger mayweather always says famously it's a quote most people don't know shit about box you ever seen anything say that no but it's true it's a medium yeah anytime there't know shit about box ever seen you say that no, but it's true. It's a medium Yeah, anytime there's anything like on the underground every time people talk about boxing

But you're but you're able to appreciate as a as an aficionado Yeah, and somebody's really sophisticated in your knowledge of the sport whereas most people are just wanting to see an intense drama Well, I watched it with my wife Yeah, I've never been in a fight in her life and doesn't know jack shit about fighting it's kind of funny yeah you know because you know if you look at our DVR it's a it's like two competing philosophies reality shows versus no she doesn't watch reality shows but she's you know she's very much into different shit that I'm into and I don't I don't mind that I don't and she doesn't mind but but it's like when our path or you know our interests cross and she watches what I watch which becomes hilarious because

she doesn't know anything about fighting right she actually said this to me I'm said this a bunch of times in the podcast I promised the last time I say it to anybody who's listening she actually says you should have to get knocked down in order to win I go what are you talking about she goes without will make him fight more I'm like he's fighting you know it's god damn woman yeah you don't understand what's happening here'm like, he's fighting. God damn woman. You don't understand what's happening here. This guy is, he's doing what he wants to do. He's if, if he stood in front of Manny Pacquiao and they just went rock them, sock them robots, fucking anything can happen.

But the way he's doing it, he's controlling all the variables. He's controlling it, but he's controlling it with his skill and his dedication, his practice and his knowledge. He's controlling it, but he's controlling it with his skill and his dedication, his practice and his knowledge. And he's information chunking. That's something that I really truly appreciate about high-level jiu-jitsu artists, about high-level martial artists in any venue. I love watching people problem-solve in real time much better than anybody else is doing. And that's what he does. He knows how you're going to react to things. Pop!

And it'll pop you with that jab. And he knows that you're going to look to step to your left. And he's already out of there. He's already gone. He's already moved. When Manny Pacquiao would step in and throw that right hook, and Floyd would dip to his left and duck and slide right off the ropes, it was genius.

It was artistic. He planned it perfectly. He knew that Pacquiao was a certain type of blitz style and Floyd just wasn't there still enjoy watching boxing do you find it? Kind of boring after watching MMA um it's not as fun But I still love it like I really love watching Canelo Alvarez fight cuz his fights are fucking chaos Gennady Golovkin who fought this weekend. He's the best Golovkin is the best to watch because you know someone's getting knocked the fuck out.

Like that guy just is a destroyer. He just seeks and destroys, seeks and destroys, and just slowly chips away at the best of them to the point where they just can't take it anymore. And their body starts giving out. He's amazing. You know he's had 350-something fights when you count his amateur career. Wow. He's amazing. That's amazing.

Yeah, never been knocked down, never been dropped, dropped never been hurt and he's knocked out everyone yeah i mean and you look at him he looks like he's in a boy band he's a little sweetie look at his face he's got a big smile even the way he talks i bring big drama fight it's amazing it's always amazing drama show sport where one person is so much better than everyone else. Like Roger Federer in tennis. It's not necessarily that he is so much better than everyone else. He's so much better than everyone he's fought. He has to fight a Mayweather. Mayweather's a little smaller than him.

His father, the way Floyd Sr. said it, he ain't fighting no damn giant. He's not a giant. He's fucking my size. He's 5'8 or something or 5'9. He's not a big guy. He's just amazing. But he's fucking my size. He's 5'8 or something or 5'9. He's not a big guy. He's just amazing. But he's 160. He fights at 160 and Mayweather is a 147.

So I kind of get it. But Canelo Alvarez I think is big enough to fight him. I think that would be a fucking fantastic fight. God. Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin would be fucking amazing. Because Alvarez, I mean, he could knock out anybody. Anybody. And so can Golovkin.

I think Golovkin's a bit more skilled than him, a bit more refined and more technical. But goddamn, Alvarez is a fucking monster. He's a monster. That would be exciting. You know, Sergei Kovalev is another really exciting guy. These Russian dudes are not regular white people How did you say they just are not so true anybody we need to get that in our head folks? Yeah? Eastern Europeans you know just coming from hardscrabble backgrounds, and how about fucking thousand years of hardscrabble genetics

That's right. That's right. That's yeah, and not these pussy Americans. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Bellator has a bunch of tough Russians. Fuck yeah, they do. Who's that little guy, Fedor, not Fedor, what do they call him? Frodo. You ever seen him fight? Oh, yeah, yeah. What the fuck is his name? He's a little savage.

Well, there's a bunch of really high-level Russian guys that are in the UFC now, too, like Habib Nurmagomedov. Yeah. There's another AKA guy. Sad, man. But, you know, I watched a video of him wrestling Luke Rockhold. And I'm like, how come a fucking guy who fights at 155 is wrestling the biggest 185 pounder the world has ever known? What is going on there?

Does he wrestle Kane, too? Because I know that Rockhold wrestles Kane. Where do you guys end this? Does he spar with DC? I mean, he's 155. What the fuck is going on? So he blew out his knee again. And, you know, he's supposed to be fighting Cowboy in my fight of the year.

I fucking love that fight. Woo! That's a stylistic fight. I mean, you got the best grappler, I think, in the division in Habib versus one of the very best strikers in all of the UFC. I mean, Donald is such a good Muay Thai striker. He's so good. He's so good.

I mean, when you see him fight a guy that is not at his level, that's when you really understand how good he is. When you see him fight like a Jim Miller and see what he could do to those guys, that's when you kind of get it in your head. You're like, well, this guy is on a very high level right now. He's something, yeah. He's also super confident, super prepared. He's been fighting so often and he's like just

in the groove right now. This is his time. Some guys are kind of bulletproof. I mean, he fights so much and he fights so hard. It's tough as shit, man.

He just holds up. You know, he's just tough as shit. That's just like who he is. He's the real deal. I mean, that guy in his spare time, he rides bulls. Gets on fucking bulls and rides them. He jumps.

That's the most dangerous sport in the world, by the way. That's not a sport. That's just people being assholes. You can't call that a sport. This is ridiculous. There's a great article in the New Yorker about bull riding. It's amazing. It'd be a sport if the bull signed up for it.

If the bulls were like, yeah, man, I want to see if I can fucking shake a dude. They breed these bulls, though. They breed them to shake. They breed them to be violent. They breed them to be dangerous. Of course they do. And it's the highest rate of head injuries, neck injuries. Oh, we had a guy on Fear Factor that had his elbow or shoulder, rather, just destroyed.

He was a professional bull rider. And he showed me his scars i could take off his shirt and his whole like his is he had like lines everywhere connecting his shoulder to his his big saw puzzle so i said like how many times you had surgery and he had some fucking ungodly number of shoulder so i don't even remember like nine or ten and he goes anything goes wrong it just pops out like if he falls wrong it just pops out. Like if he falls wrong, it just pops out, and then he needs someone to like yank on it. I guess you got to extend it, it'll pop back in place.

Yeah, I have a friend who has that. Yeah, and all for what? So he can get that eight seconds on a monster? It's the same thing with MMA, you know. It seems crazy to people from the outside, but there's a certain challenge to it. There's a quest to it. I would hop in a ring.

I would agree to three fights in a night before I would agree to ride a bull. No doubt about it. No fucking doubt about it. You're not very good at riding bulls. I don't think anybody's good at it. If the best guy could do eight seconds, everybody sucks at riding bulls. If there was a dude out there that was like the Michael Jordan of bull riding, they could just ride bulls for like a half an hour.

They're just kicking them and shit. And he's like, what? You know, he's like blowing kisses to his mom in the crowd. Then I would say there's a guy that's good at bull riding. But everybody sucks. It's just some guys suck less. I'm pretty good at it. Really good at it?

Yeah, I was at this fair one time. And they had one of those mechanical bulls. And everybody's riding, you know, doing it right the one-handed way. I'm like, fuck it. I'm going to beat this thing. And I just clench it. I get on, two hands, hold on to it, bury my face into it, and just hold on, you know. How was that?

Hold on. I rode for like two minutes. Whoa. Drove the crowd wild. Half the people booed me, you know, for cheating, and the other half were like, that guy's a genius. So you grab it like a rear naked choke. You grab it, yeah, like you're pulling guard as hard as you possibly can. But wait a minute.

Okay, let me think. You see a mechanical bull. Right, but where are you grabbing it? You can just kind of grab around. Can you pull a picture of a mechanical bull up, please? A pommel horse in gymnastics. You know the pommel horse in gymnastics? It's kind of like that.

Right. You can just kind of get under it with both of your hands. You put your face into it. I'm very curious now, because I rode one of those things for some stupid MTV thing, and I was shocked at how easy it was for them to fly me off of that fucker. I don't know if it lasted five seconds. I rode for like two minutes.

That's insane. Okay, let me look at that. Oh, there's a bunch of different kinds, huh? Some of them actually look like bulls. Oh yeah, I rode real cow. I rode the cow kind. The one that looks like a cow? Yeah. Did it have horns, or no? I don't think he had horns. Maybe he had rubber horns, but I could get right around his head. You don't want... Imagine if someone died because it had real horns.

That would suck. Okay, so you could get your arms... That was the one right there. You see that one with the fair where they have the bubble around it? You know the... That right there? Yeah, that one there. Okay, click on that.

That's the one I rode. You can just get him around the neck. You kind of choke him out. Huh. And you clench real hard. Like, his head was bigger, so I don't know if you could get around his head yeah that guy's riding it like a moron yeah well that's like why they call the rear naked choke the lion killer they say there's only one way to kill a lion you gotta choke it gotta choke it out yeah you gotta get its back hard to get it back i think

good luck getting your fucking arms around a lion's neck it's hard to get your arms around a big guy's neck i know yeah get your arms yeah there's guys's neck. Oh, I know, yeah. Get your arms around. Yeah, there's guys that I can't choke. Yeah, I mean, you could, but it's not easy. But a lion is strong as fuck. They weigh 500 pounds. And a bull? Okay, so you reach under, and what are you grabbing with your arms? Well, again, his neck is too big, but it's a matter of his neck was a little smaller.

You just get your arms around his neck. Do you ass grip it? I think I did something like that, probably. It was a small mechanical bull. You might have rode a bitch-ass bull. No, no, he was killing her. You were riding a mechanical cow, son. Don't say that. Like a calf, maybe a veal.

This was one of my best moments. I don't have many moments of victory. So people booed you? Half of them booed me for cheating, you know, because it was obviously counter to the spirit of the activity. Dummies. He broke the code. He figured it out. Good for you, dude.

It was a little tough, though. I mean, my face was all like burned. Did you get anything out of it or just pride? I got pride. I got a lot of pride out of it. I'm telling you about it on the air. This is my big moment. Yeah, the idea of riding a giant animal.

First of all, I don't like the idea of raising those things to do that. I don't even like zoos, man. I go to zoos and it drives me nuts. Well, it's not bullfighting. I don't know if it's such a bad— Bullfighting is more fucked up. Yeah, bullfighting is way more fucked up because I don't think there's anything bad that really happens to the bull. He doesn't like those people on his back.

Right. And he bucks them off ferociously and they're only on there for eight seconds. And some of these bulls are smart and they figure out how to hurt people. They know if they buck in just a certain way while throwing their head back at the same time, you know, they can really do damage to people get these people off their back Jesus Christ. Yeah, some of them are basically killers and they have to be retired because they get too good at it It's article in the New Yorker. I'm not telling you Google it New Yorker and bullfighting. It's amazing article bullfighting Riding all right. Yeah bullfighting, I'm hugely opposed to. That drives me crazy.

First of all, there's a bunch of people sticking that thing with poison arrows or poison darts. I don't know if it's poisoned. Don't they have poison in them? No, I don't think it's poisoned. Really? It's barbaric. But one of the great books about combat sport is Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. If you haven't read that, I'd really recommend it because almost everything he says about bullfighting is relevant to other forms of combat spore.

It's really a great book. I always thought they had some sort of poison they use in those spears and they jab it into them. I don't believe so. The spears are basically what they do. They drain energy from the animal. And they also force it to put its head down. And that's important because the killing stroke needs to be delivered over the horns. And so what they want is a very clean, balletic type of kill,

which means that they have to get the animal's head arranged in a downward position so they can get the sword to go home. So where are they trying to drive it into? It's like a spinal column? Like I've seen them do it before. No, I think they're going for the heart. Oh, they go through the back. They go in with a two foot, three foot sword all the way to the hill.

Ooh. Yeah, they go in right to the hill. It goes in like butter. Jesus Christ. Do they eat the bull after they do that? Because bulls are not that delicious, right? They're very tough. I have no idea.

I have no idea. I imagine they do. These are peasant societies that, you know, developed this custom, and I'm sure they ate the bull. Well, most people aren't aware that if you buy steak in a market, you're getting an animal that's been neutered. Yeah. You get what's called a steer, and they take a bull, and they cut his balls off when he's young, and they let him grow to size, and then they kill him. So he has a more tender meat. Right.

If you eat, like, I shot a moose in this guy right here in British Columbia. That's him? Yeah, this mother. What, did you boil his face? Yeah, well, I had a guy do it. I didn't do it myself. I'm busy, dude. I got shit to do.

But yeah, it's called a European mount. It's amazing the structure of the inside of his nose. Oh, yeah. That's his nostrils there? Their nostrils are incredible. That's amazing. And that's a deer. It's a little different.

They're both deer. That's the largest deer in North America. So how much was your moose? That's a moose? Because that doesn't look like a moose. It's a small moose. That's why. He was only a couple years old, so he was only 900 pounds. Wow. But a big moose? Because that doesn't look like a moose. It's a small moose. That's why. He was only a couple years old, so he was only 900 pounds.

Wow. But a big moose. 900 pounds is huge. It is, but not for a moose. How big did they get? My friend shot one that was 1,400 pounds. Wow. But my point being that the muscle, like the tissue, is really dense.

Like there's some areas like the back, like the tenderloins and the back straps that are more of a tender meat. But the tissue of a moose is like muscle. It's just a fucking unbelievably powerful animal that

if he got older he would have these huge saloon doors growing out of his head. And then he would use those to slam into other dudes who also have those things. And they're just so strong. So the meat is really tough. Yeah, they haven't been bred for eons to be hamburgers. Exactly.

And my friend shot a water buffalo in Australia. And he said they cooked the back strap which is like the most tender part and he said he had a piece of meat in his mouth that he chewed for half an hour he's not joking yeah he said he was practicing with his bow and arrow and he was practicing for a half an hour with one piece of meat in his mouth that he was trying to break down I mean we're such we're such pussies we are. We're so soft and mushy. Like, you know, we're talking about, like, cage fighting. Oh, I know.

Amazing. You get in there, you're fighting against a person. Oh, I know. I felt embarrassed about it a lot of times about how scared I was when I would think about, like, how much harder, you know, other people have it. You know, I was reading other memoirs of people, like, who did dangerous things, especially, like, war reporters. Oof. Like, Sebastian Younger went over and wrote books about the Afghanistan war. He went into this little platoon way off in the middle of nowhere. I mean, they're really in the shit.

He got blown up in a Humvee, you know, all kinds of badass stuff. And he didn't complain. He didn't bitch and moan about it. He went back. He went back, I know. That guy's nuts. The bravery of those guys is astonishing. And so you compare the cage fighters. These guys seem really brave and they are but that's that's a whole nother level well

and sebastian junger is not even shooting back no he's writing yeah and he's got his head up because he's got his camera because he's videotaping all this stuff he did two documentaries and you know bolts are flying and he's got his he's got his head up what kind of fucking ptsd does that guy have well his friend his friend died you know like a are flying, and he's got his head up. What kind of fucking PTSD does that guy have? Well, his friend died, you know, like a week after, not a week after, but soon afterwards, his friend, the other cameraman, a guy named Tim Hetherington, was killed, I believe, in Libya. And so, yeah, I think he's got some pretty severe emotional, psychological damage from it. He said he was not going back.

He said he's not going back to war zones anymore. Yeah, I would say that's a good decision. Yeah, yeah. He knows when to quit. But if it wasn't for guys like that or the people that filmed like Restrepo or... Yeah, that's who it is. Yeah.

That's who it is. That was Hetherington and Sebastian Younger. And there's a new documentary that... Younger's a fighter, you know, by the way. Was he? Yeah. Sebastian Younger. Read my book, please. Looks like it. His nose is kind of jacked. Yeah, he boxes.

Still? I believe so, yeah. I believe so. He's a tough guy. That's one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about. When I heard this concept, the professor in the cage, the protecting of essential cognitive function, which is necessary to pursue your career. Yeah. I mean, did you find there was any negative repercussions physically? Did you feel anything?

The first time I got punched really hard in the face was really, it's really educational, you know, because watching from outside the cage, you kind of know like, you know, this isn't good for these people. You kind of know it's a brain damage contest. But it's different to actually feel it. And the first time I got knocked around pretty good and afterwards kind of felt concussed, even during the attack, even when I was taking these shots, I was able to think to myself, you know, I make my living trying to think smart thoughts. And I better quit while I still know my alphabet. But I didn't.

But what was the negative aspects of it? I don't know. I mean, I don't think I had a lot of headaches, and occasionally I would be cloudy, you know, for a day or two afterwards. You know, there's a sort of— After sparring? Yeah, I'd be like a little—I felt like it was sort of like a translucent blanket thrown over my head and slowed my thinking and clouded my

perception. Did you ever get that same sort of feeling just from hard training where you were exhausted? No, this was definitely a time where, a couple times I got, you know, again it's one of these situations, you're in sparring and guys hit you too hard. And there was a couple guys who were notorious for it and I got really jacked up by a few guys.

One time where, you know, this guy just landed this brutal left hook against me, and he didn't really mean to. Like, he apologized afterwards. I was moving in. You know, he tagged me hard. And, you know, I was almost knocked out. You know, saw stars, the whole world, my perception of the world sort of starts flipping over.

The lights are kind of going on and off. But I didn't, you know, with brain damage, it's usually a time bomb that goes off sometime in the future. So you don't know. There is and there isn't. There's also, there's an accumulative damage issue. But there's also, I've met guys where I knew them, and then they had one really hard fight, and then they were different. Yeah, so I didn't have anything like that, at least not to my knowledge. I mean, I'd have short-term repercussions of it. How often were

you sparring? Our gym was not all that enlightened of a place, you know, and the culture of it was pretty intense. So, I don't know, probably twice a week, pretty hard sparring, you know. I'm always fascinated by people who know the repercussions and still dive into it and still just say, you know what, it's worth the risk. That's what everybody's doing. Nowadays, everybody knows the risks. I mean, MMA fighters, you know, these are smart guys. These are middle class guys, most of them are college educated. But a guy like you is different because you're not really, I mean, you are an MMA fighter and that you did fight,

but that's not like what your, your pursuit. It is my pursuit though. My pursuit is writing books. Right. And I saw a good book in it. So I did it for professional reasons too. I mean, there was a, there was a personal reason. I'd never been in a fight before. I was kind of curious about whether I was a coward or not. And I wanted to do this brave thing. For me, it was a brave thing. But there was also a professional thing, just like the fighters have. And the fighters are doing it because they need to make a living.

I was doing it because I wasn't making much of a living. And I needed to try to do something. Mix it up. Yeah, that would shock. Shock a little bit. Shock me out of my old ruts. Um, and write a book that had a larger audience than the books I'd written before, which is sort of books for English lit nerds. Now, what was the actual experience of the fight?

Like talk us through the day of it. What did you feel like when you woke up in the morning and you knew, holy shit, today's the day? I was, you know, there was a level of anxiety that was always there. I was glad, however, that I didn't feel the terror that I felt that I might fear. I was afraid that I'd be so scared that I'd like chicken out or just behave in a cowardly fashion. And there was a lot of anxiety, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. And when I got in the cage, one of the things that was really interesting to me, because I didn't know this would happen, is all the fear pretty much evaporated. Fear is really, really useful.

You know, it's your body's way of saying to you, dude, this is really dumb. This is really dumb. Let's reconsider. Let's see if there's a different way to do this thing. So it's useful going in, but once you're in the cage and you've been locked inside, fear is no longer very useful. Cowering is not going to save you. You know, you're locked in. There's no getting out of this thing. And my fear just kind of went away. And it was replaced by something that was really cool in retrospect. It was this sense of focus that I'd never felt before. Never felt before.

Nothing close to it. Like I was in this arena, a minor league hockey arena. There's people there hooting and howling. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. All I could see was the guy in front of me. All I could hear was him. You know, I had this incredible tunnel vision.

So at some point my coach was screaming at me. Screaming out instructions, screaming out warnings. And he's a loud guy. He's one of these classic cornermen whose voice just fills the whole arena. I never heard it. I never heard it. There was just nothing in the world except

for that guy. So yeah, that was... How'd the fight go? You know, I don't want to give too much away about it, but... Why is that? Is it in the book? It's in the book, and I sort of built some suspense to it, but, you know... So you don't want to tell us what happened? I'll tell you a little bit about what happened.

The fight was 47 seconds long. Did you win? I won the first 46 seconds. And then the fight took a nasty turn in the last second. One second? Pretty much, much yeah it was pretty abrupt uh i yeah for 46 seconds i was i was sort of imposing my will and things were going my way and i was starting to feel good uh and then uh you know things went bad yeah things went really bad and it was over it was that fast it was amazing did you want to do it again after it was over desperately really desperately and it wasn't even sweaty yet i wasn't even sweaty yet and i was like

okay now i know how to do this did you get hit or did you get choked i got arm barred oh that's not a bad way to lose no it wasn't but it wasn't part of it you know i'm approaching as a writer and i wanted like a story that was more epic, you know, more of a I don't know, just more of a heroic struggle, something that would make a better story. And part of it was, you know, I really screwed up. I really screwed up in the fight. And

afterwards I was like, okay, now I have this under my belt. I was almost positive that I wouldn't have made that mistake again. I would know how to do it. I kind of made a really bad rookie mistake. What was the mistake? Well, basically, my strategy going in was I was always a better grappler than I was a striker. It wasn't that I was a great grappler, but I was better at it than striking. And so we didn't know anything about the other guy. We knew nothing. He had no Google presence um we didn't know if he was a striker a grappler we didn't know if he's left-handed or

right-handed these are all really bad things not to know and so the game plan was just we take him down and try to make him fight me off his back because that's what i did best um so you know right off right off the bat you know within you know a few I shot, got the takedown, got him down against the fence, was about this close to securing the mount. He kind of had me in a headlock. I got out of it. I swept my foot up and was almost in the mount. And then that was the first clue that I was out of my league. Right away, he just did this really kind of fancy, sophisticated thing where he drew me effortlessly into the guard and started working on that armbar. And I didn't, and I knew something was bad. Something bad was happening.

And so I got up and I yanked and yanked and yanked and yanked and got out and ran for it. Okay. He rolls to his feet and chases me. And at that point, that was when an experienced fighter would have said, okay, it's not a good idea to roll around with this guy on the ground. We need to change the plan. And that's what my coach was screaming at me. You know, he was screaming at me, you know, you don't want to go to the ground with this guy. heard to me. So I waited, I sort of set that ambush. We were waiting for the guy to throw a punch, throw a kick and you shoot. And, uh, that happened, you know, he kicked me in the, in the ribs and, uh, at the same, same second I shot and it was this great moment in my life. It was almost better than the bull riding moment. Um, there's this great picture. I got him, you know, perfect double leg takedown, you know, he's airborne and we come down hard smack. Um, and at this point, again, I feel like I'm in control of this fight.

I'm winning. Everything's going great. And the next thing I know, I mean, one second, two seconds later, he'd somehow swept me. It was a fancy arm bar. You know, I was a white belt at best. And it was a fancy arm bar where he managed to sort of flip me over like a pancake. And, you know, next thing I know, I'm looking up at the ceiling instead of looking down at him. And it was tight.

Did you watch it? I watched it, yeah. But it took me a while to even figure out what he had done. Is it available online? No, I don't think so. I have the video. I could show you. I'd like to see the transition.

Yeah, yeah. What he did. I could show you. Like, we could get on the ground here and I could show you. Okay. To you, I'm sure it would be really, really basic. Super basic. But, you know, for me, I'm only a year into this at this point.

My jiu-jitsu was pretty rudimentary. One of the things, and this is going to seem weird, that I've been noticing about yoga, is getting into yoga again recently recently is the various complexities of each position. It's not, it's not as simple as like, put your leg here, stand up. There's like back has to be straight. You expand your chest, lengthen your back, push down with your heels, you know, push your hips forward. There's all these different variables that you have to take into consideration in every single posture. Well, the same exists in jiu-jitsu just on a much more complex level. There's so much because you're attacking someone and then they're defending and then

you're anticipating the defense and setting up a second attack off of that defense. Oftentimes the first attack is just to gauge how they respond and then you know and there's you chaining all the the, like, Helsing Gracie, Steve Maxwell, famous strength and conditioning coach, jujitsu black belt, been on this podcast a few times, described how Helsing Gracie describes jujitsu. And he goes, because he's got, you know, kind of a pretty deep accent, he goes, you do this, then I do that, then I do this, then you do that forever. Yeah, that's good. This is a great way to describe it. Sure. And the more you understand about each position, the more you understand about where could things go wrong, where could things go right, what are you trying to achieve?

And when you don't know that, like the way you're describing it, like what's happening? I had no idea. How am I? There was no this or that. He did this and it was Over and so what happened was like why I wanted to fight again like right then afterwards was because I knew that You know I'd chosen exactly the wrong game plan to fight this guy and afterwards we became Facebook friends And I see all of his pictures on his Facebook page are him with gold medals on his chest from winning on his Facebook page are him with gold medals

on his chest from winning Jiu Jitsu competition tournaments yeah so he's a Jiu Jitsu wizard so I was completely out of my league is he a black belt?

I don't believe so close but yeah he was up there he's really good yeah he's really good have you considered just really training hard at Jiu Jitsu?

that's what I'd like to do yeah how old are you now? if I can get healthy I'm 42 it gets tough I know it gets tough

well the problem with me is you know this is why I think I had so many physical problems. It's like there is a nature and a nurture to flexibility. You know, some people have, you know, some people have really high vertical leap by just by nature, you know, and some people are really flexible just by nature. Uh, I appear to be the guy who's not very flexible by nature when I work on it really hard, but boy, I just don't seem to get much more flexible. I oppose that because no one in my family is flexible but me.

And the reason why I'm flexible is because my body developed by stretching. I mean, I was stretching from the time I was really young. Yeah, well, that could be it. Starting when you're young and supple. But when I was in my early 20s, you know, if you're doing karate, there's a lot of stuff you just can't do if you're not very flexible. And so I worked on it really hard. Well, there was a guy that used to come to our jiu-jitsu gym. This is one of the reasons why I pose it.

And he was this big fucking football player. And he was like 250 pounds. And whenever I used to roll with him, I used to literally say, I'm going to go ride the bull. Because that was what was like rolling with him. Like he wasn't good. I think I was a brown belt, and I think he was a white belt at the time. And so I would always get him, but it would be a while Yeah, I mean it would be like ah

Fucking like hanging on to this guy for a long time and riding the bull but this guy was a dedicated athlete and one of the things that he did was he Radically improved his flexibility while he was there when he first started out You know how you sit there like with your legs in a butterfly position and you try to push your knees down to the ground? He couldn't even come close. His knees are like stuck up like this. That's how I am. He couldn't push him down at all.

But that fucking guy would be there after class for 40 minutes longer than anybody else just stretching, just pushing his soft tissue to the limit every day And it's that kind of dedication that led to a year plus later like my friend Eddie Bravo my my jiu-jitsu Instructor as well. He always talks about that guy this one guy He fucking put in the time put in the numbers and he got really flexible I mean he was almost at a full split after like a year and a half But it was the kind of dedication that led him to be a football player I mean he was a professional athlete and he just this guy just fucking put on the blinders and went for flexibility

He knew he was ridiculously strong. He knew he was ridiculously powerful So he had to learn the technique and he had to get flexible. Yeah, and so he he I saw him do it man I saw it take place so whenever when someone says they said oh you have certain restrictions there's certain it's only so far you say this all the time you say that not everyone's given the same genetic gifts yes it's unequal no doubt about that when it comes to fast bravo you know like he's just a freakish he has some freakish flexibility in some areas he does but it's also he's stretched those areas ad nauseum. I mean, that guy, you'll be watching TV with him,

and he's pulling his foot to his chest. Like, seriously. I try to, too, though. I watch TV, and I stretch the whole time. I don't know how much you stretched. I don't know how much you stretched, but I do know that I watched this guy do it, and I watched this guy get way more flexible,

and it was amazing. But my point is there are unquestionably physical gifts that you can't achieve. Like fast twitch muscle fiber, speed, and power. Cardio too. Cardio. Cain Velasquez is the one that they always bring up. Size of bones. Size of the hands.

The width of the shoulders. All those things contribute to power. And also the explosion. Like the fast guys like a guy like Uriah Hall like Uriah Hall without a doubt is trained very hard And well prepared he has excellent technique But you watch Uriah Hall shoot a straight right hand and you're like okay like I don't know how many guys can do it that Fast like he'll he'll be like moving around and all sudden crap Can do it that fast like he'll he'll be like moving around and all sudden crap You're like lean in with this right hand the cut and you see the look on the guy's face after he got hit where he Realizes like whoa like this guy's got some next-level speed like I was talking to your eyes coaches after one of his fights

He's like he's the fastest fucking guy I've ever seen like the fastest guy like you see him in the gym I mean he is so fucking fast and some of that is I mean some Some portion of that is unattainable for the average person Yeah, that's just the reality. Yeah, but It does. Why would you think would be different for flexibility because I think flexibility is something that you can push Because it's just a matter of how far your soft cardio goes it's just a matter of how far your soft tissue goes no not really you can push like crazy capacity though is different the size of the heart is different like there's one of the things they always said about lance armstrong he has an enormous heart that's part of that's part of the

training too though could you grow the heart it's a muscle it atrophies it hypertrophies plus all the shit that he took yeah probably Also injecting steroids directly into his fucking heart and one of those ones from Pulp Fiction when they revived Uma Thurman Who knows man who knows I just think that flexibility is a little bit more simple I don't think you could achieve the flexibility of say like you have an anecdote of your big friend I'm saying that I think I'm the other anecdote might be yeah, I've never seen you stretch though We'll do it after okay. Let's see how hard you push it because some people get to a certain point like Okay, okay, okay, but you got to get to that super. I can't breathe point and you got to push that bitch Yeah, it's just it's also like how do you do it? Do you do it correctly?

Do you have someone who's pushing you correctly and what what, where are you starting out from? You're starting out from 39, 40 years of doing jack shit to stretch out. And then all of a sudden you're trying to take these mature, older muscles and pull them apart. That's a big part. That's a big part of it. That's right. So I've been sitting at a desk for years and years. Yeah. I mean, if somebody got ahold of you when you were 16, it's very possible. And when you were doing Kyokushin Did your school really emphasize stretching? I did You know, because I knew

Well, I knew I couldn't kick guys in the head And I knew I wanted to be able to You know, because that's a big part of it There's all kinds of kicks I had all kinds of cool stuff I couldn't do Right So I got a stretching machine, you know All those Chuck Norris jammies

I don't know what was Chuck Norris I think I got the knock-off version Because it was cheaper. No crank, no. You didn't have a crank? No, mine was different. It was some kind of like PVC type thing. Oh, okay, I know that type.

Yeah, yeah. It was like a pipe and you pull the pipe and it stretches your legs apart. Yeah, exactly. Those do a little bit, but realistically, you don't need that. What you really need is just someone who can help you and push your back down and then also the ability to withstand pain. That's it, the uncomfortable feeling of pushing your muscles to the limit. Yeah, I don't mind that.

It's hard to change your body in many ways. It's hard to develop more muscle because your body doesn't want to. Your body doesn't want to change. Your body just wants to get really sore and then discourage you from, from continuing to lift, you know, in order to force your body to gain weight. Like if someone said to me, Hey man, I want to put on about five pounds of muscle. Well, you're going to have to work out three days a week, like a madman for a year. Good luck. You know, there's one thing, if you're a dedicated professional athlete, you've been doing it a long time and your body knows how to grow, and there's a certain amount of also muscle memory that comes into play.

When you see someone who is really big, but then they lose the muscle mass, like maybe they'll get into something else and they'll stop lifting, they can get really big way quicker than the average person. Yeah, that seems right. No, it's a fact. than the average person. Yeah, that seems right. No, it's a fact. Like, say if you used to weigh 230 pounds, you big fucking giant dude,

and then you dropped down to 170, you could gain, like, if you took two dudes that weighed 170, and they were both, you know, reasonably fit, and one of them used to be enormous, he will get bigger quicker. Just muscle memory. Yeah.

There's no getting around that. But your body doesn't want to do it. it's you you have to really push that bitch and i think the same takes place with flexibility and the same um the same holds true with uh with gains with size gains this is very difficult to do yeah you have to be willing to push your body to this really uncomfortable position, and then you have to fuel it with all sorts of food. It's like I get a kick out of whenever people compare. It's a funny thing. It happens on my message board or my forum sometimes. People start talking about diets and caloric requirements, and then they'll bring up Michael Phelps.

Well, Michael Phelps ate 15 fucking pizzas a day. Do you have any idea how hard Michael Phelps works out? Don't ever fucking compare yourself to Michael Phelps. Just stop. He's the greatest Olympic swimmer the world has ever known. And whatever genetic gifts he has, they were

unquestionably accentuated by a barbaric work ethic and we those things helped yeah I think that we'd helped him recover and he's 6 7 yeah he's a big giant fucking long dude but also the amount of calories that guy was burning every day the average person really can't relate you just you can't relate no like the amount of effort that it takes to be a Chris Weidman the kind of training Camps that Vitor Belfort goes through what you know what John Jones went through when trained for Daniel It'll be interesting when the stronger drug testing see if these guys can get through these kind of camps

You know you got a very good point. Yeah, well, that's the that's the dirty secret You know that's sort of being slowly but surely revealed. For the longest time, there were certain things that you couldn't test for, like growth hormone. You couldn't even find it. I had a conversation with Chael Sonnen after he got popped. And he wanted to talk to me on the phone about how he should approach it. And Chael's a funny guy, man. He's fucking hilarious.

He's a great shit talker, too. But goes yeah you know those drug tests turns out they're really good he got caught for all sorts of shit that he never thought he'd get caught for growth hormone epo yeah he had a cocktail going but you know in his mind I think he had a very small window to achieve something and he probably was correct in assuming that he wasn't the only one doing it yeah he's probably correct in assuming that it's almost impossible not almost impossible but it's really hard to get to win the without it well Jose Aldo had a really interesting thing to say. And Andre Pettinaris as well. They were talking about steroids. And they were like, well, we support testing, but I hope the UFC realizes the fights won't be as exciting.

Like the fighters won't be as good. Well, they're also going to be out of fights more often. They're also not going to be able to make it to fight day. They're not going to have the healing benefits of all that testosterone. Yeah, you're redlining your body going through camp and then bang, bang, bang, bang. Things fucking break off and cylinders blow. I don't think they can work as hard as they're working without some help. Some can.

Some can. Some are clean. Some have always been clean. Guys like Frankie Edgar, he's clean as fuck. A lot of guys you think are clean turn out not to be. That's a problem. I mean, I think Frankie Edgar is almost certainly clean. Some have always been clean. Guys like Frankie Edgar, he's clean as fuck. A lot of guys you think are clean turn out not to be, you know? That's a problem. I mean, I think Frankie Edgar is almost certainly clean. But who knows if he's not eating EPO, and that's one of the secrets to his incredible cardio.

I don't think that at all. But you wouldn't know is my point. Well, yeah, I don't know. I mean, John Fitch really surprised me when he turned positive. Tons of people were surprised. Anderson Silva was surprising, right? I wish I could tell you. I'll tell you off the air.

I can't tell you on the air the Anderson Silva situation. It's a bit more complicated. First of all, he unquestionably took some for his leg. To try to heal his leg. 38 years old. He had a broken leg. I can see the temptation for sure. There's a lot.

And there's also, I think that there is nothing. This is my opinion. I think that it is not only is there nothing wrong, but there may be a case for doctors to prescribe some sort of steroids, some controlled amount of some sort of steroids for catastrophic injuries, like massive leg breaks or, you know, pec tears or there's some pretty fucking significant injuries. Here's another one. Hector Lombard went through a bulging disc, like a significantly injured disc, and then was fighting, you know, I think he had a fight scheduled like six months later. Good luck trying to recover from something like that in six months. I mean, you kind of can, but can you recover enough in three months to go through a three-month camp?

Most likely not. And then he turned up positive for some designer steroid that most people didn't think they were testing for. You know, like the whole Barry Bonds thing with the clear and all this. There was a lot of that going on, I think. In boxing, there was a lot of that going on. There's tons of it. I mean, the big giveaway is you have all these old guys. that going on, I think. In boxing, there was a lot of that going on. There's tons of it.

I mean, the big giveaway is you have all these old guys. These guys in their 40s still competing as cage fighters. Well, that doesn't really exist anymore. I mean, Randy was like kind of the last one that competed at a super high level. But still just be able to do it at all in that sport, man. In your 40s? Randy's also an undeniable freak of nature because Randy never got hurt. I mean, Randy lost and he got knocked out and stuff like that. But, I mean, in training.

Like, he never had a surgery. Never had a broken hand. He got his arm broken in the Gonzaga fight, but that was blocking a kick. He looked awfully good for 50. He's a fucking stud. He's a goddamn... I mean, that's the real Captain America. Randy Couture's a fucking stud.

You have to be to be able to... I remember... But don't you assume that he was on something in that era? Yes and no. I don't have the evidence. I mean, yeah, I don't want to, I assume that it's very likely. Well, I've, I've said the same thing about Fedor and people got mad at me. Fedor fought in a dirty league. He fought in pride. It was a dirty league. I mean, Ensign Inouye sat in the very seat you're sitting in and was laughing about his contract for pride where they told him that we don't test for steroids. Does that mean that Fedor was not on it? No, it doesn't mean that. But when you have

a league where everyone's on it, like Vanderlei was without a doubt. And I said, one of my favorite fighters of all time is not my number one favorite. Like when I get excited to watch a fight, when Vanderlei was fighting, it was probably the most excited you can get. You know? It's just like, you knew it was just going to be chaos. He's just such a berserker, you know? He was terrifying. But he was obviously on some shit.

Obviously. And the Vanderlei that showed up at the UFC was not the same guy. He just wasn't. I mean, he still had that warrior's heart, but his body just did not cooperate the same way. And a lot of it is probably because his endocrine system Is all fucked up from years of using stuff So you know Was he? I don't know

I don't know you know I'm just guessing The Vandalee one Vandalee ran away from a drug test too And now is suspended indefinitely Which I think is kind of fucked up You know I think they should have The worst they could give you at the time you tested positive was like

A year they should have given him a year yeah They should have said look dude We know what the fuck is going on and then if that's the case he'd already be fighting again by now yeah You could treat it just like that's a concession. I can see that I'm yeah, I run if I run I concede Yeah, they wanted to make an example out of them, and they said, you know, we're going to give you a lifetime ban. Well, that's fucked up, man, because this guy, this is his life, this is his living. He essentially took away his living from one violation, the only violation of his entire professional career. You know, suspicions aside, and there's certainly suspicions of when he was competing in Pride,

and even possibly suspicions of when he was competing in pride and even possibly suspicions of when he was competing in the UFC. But the reality is the guy never got caught except for the one time where he evaded a test, treat it like it's a positive test. I mean, I get the whole idea of sending a fucking message, but that message has long been sent. I mean, everybody knows if you test positive and then you see the new testing rules that they pulled out, the new ones are brutal. The new ones are three years.

Some of them are lifetime. Lifetime, if you have a second, if you try to run away from a test, the second time you try to run away from a test, a lifetime suspension. But three years for a first offense. I don't know if it's three years or two years. I think it's two years, three years for a second offense. It's almost a career suspension. But three years for a first offense. I don't know if it's three years or two years. I think it's two years, three years for a second offense. That's almost a career under. Not only that,

they take 75% of your purse, up to 75% of your purse. There's some big ones. If you take three years out of a guy's prime. Especially a guy in his late 30s, like an Anderson. Like Anderson.

Anderson's going through, I don't know what they give him, a year and a half. And he's fighting against it. We'll talk in about 10 minutes, and I'll give you the whole rundown of what I actually know. You'll go, oh, I wish I could tell you. Here it goes. First offense for testosterone, antibiotics, steroids, HGH, 36-month suspension,

fine of 50% to 75%. Second offense, four fucking years, 75 to 100% of fighter's purse. Third offense, lifetime suspension. Fine of 100%. Avoiding first offense, four years. Fine of 75%. Second offense, lifetime suspension. Fine of 100% of fighter's purse.

Well, I wonder if that'll be enough. I guess the idea is we're going to hang you. They're trying to set up almost a zero tolerance policy in order to scare guys straight. Well, Rhonda Rousey had a very good point. And this point is that if someone uses some sort of anabolic steroid and they can hit their opponent more and then that opponent dies totally this is that is that murder or is that manslaughter that's interesting it's a very good point the guys are already superheroes exactly you juice them up and yeah that's dangerous you can you can most certainly if you're on epo and human growth hormone and testosterone you can most certainly hit someone more than you would be able to if you were not on that

Especially if like these cases where guys are testing with like literally superhuman levels like Vitor when they when they eventually rescinded the testosterone replacement therapy thing for Nevada when they tested him he was at 1475 an average man in his prime is like around 500 to like 800 for some crazy stud yeah so he was like essentially like double a human being wow the level of testosterone so it's crazy yeah nevada judge overturns vandalee silva's lifetime ban really this just happened today holy shit breaking news ladies and gentlemen. Talk about fucking current. And talk about poignant.

Wow, pull that down. Let's fucking scroll that. Good for him. It broke at 2.30. Vanderlei Silva won a major victory in court today with a Nevada district judge throwing out the lifetime ban. I will applaud. I applaud that. ESPN's Brett Accomodo reported via Twitter that the judge did agree that the Nevada State Athletic Commission had jurisdiction over Silva despite being an unlicensed athlete at the time, but that there was not sufficient evidence to support a lifetime ban.

I agree. 35-12-1 MMA, 5-7 in the UFC was handed a hefty punishment after he ran from a random drug test. So they overturned the suspension, the lifetime ban, but it doesn't mean that he's been reinstated. He's not reinstated. But what's good is he's still under contract with the UFC. The UFC wouldn't even let him. He made a bunch of really critical videos about the UFC, which, again, a lot of these guys, man, they need someone to talk to.

I would love to be the guy, you know. I'd love to be the guy that talked to a lot of these guys and just go, don't do that. Don't do that. Well, once he was banned for life. Well, also he was talking about the UFC treating people like slaves. And then, you know, Dana was like, we gave you $9 million. Wow.

That's how much he made in the UFC. Really? Yes. It's like, come on, son. That's not slavery. That's not slavery. You fought for seven years. You made $9 million. Wow. That's how much he made in the UFC. Did he really? Yes. It's like, come on, son. That's not slavery. That's not slavery. You fought for seven years. You made $9 million.

That's good money. It's good money, man. And you had seminars. You ran a gym. You did well. You're a fucking... And he's a loved guy. I just have a soft spot in my heart for Vandalay.

As a human being, when I know him, when I meet him and see him, I always like to see him. He's a very warm, friendly guy. And I just, any guy who's willing to fight like that guy. Yeah. That guy. And be a sweet guy out of the cage. That's really, that's what's so fascinating about people like him. Like I have, I had some friends from my gym who trained with Vanderlei's gym.

They all love him. Oh, he's a sweet guy. He's the nicest guy. But he spars like it's life or death. Yeah. Like there's videos of him sparring. Yeah, I've heard about that. And I'm like, Jesus. Yeah, that was the real Stone Age. Remember, was that Shoot death. Yeah. Like there's videos of him sparring. Yeah, I've heard about that. And I'm like, Jesus fuck.

Yeah, that was the real Stone Age. Remember, was that Shootbox? Yeah, Shoot the Box. Shoot the Box. Well, Hu-Jumar, you know, the guy who ran it, he... What does Shoot a Box mean? Does it mean shoot and box? What does that mean?

Oh, that's a good question. I mean, it's obviously a Portuguese version, probably of Shootbox, which is... That's how John Donahue describes mma like shoot shoot boxing you know shoot box rules the rules of engagement and the way you approach it and think it i think that what um what they did at shoot box was established like the most aggressive most intimidating team ever yeah you know especially at that Like, they were just all berserkers. Yeah. Vanderlei, Shogun, Ninja, Anderson, Pele.

There was just one killer after another. In their primes, too. In their primes. And then, you know, Rafael Cordero, a guy who's gone from that gym and now is training like Fabrizio Verdum, radically increased his striking. Rafael Dos Anjos radically increased his striking. Rafael Dos Anjos radically increased his striking. It's not just like that

attitude and that drive. It's also skill. Those guys are very skillful. And they just also know about putting pressure on motherfuckers. Like Dos Anjos versus Pettis, that was just aggression and pressure. But again, after that fight, I've got Nick Curzon, the guy who trained him in his strength

and conditioning up, I think he's here next week. And no, I'm sorry. He's here on Wednesday. And I'm really interested to talk to him about it because his style of training fighters, he learned from the Marinoviches the same guy that got BJ Penn in the best shape of his life back when he fought like Diego Sanchez

that BJ I think one of the greatest fighters of all time for sure BJ Penn but I think that BJ is the prime BJ so I'm really curious to see what their approach was to get a guy in the kind of condition where he could fight five retarded hard rounds like that. So I don't know how it's possible.

I don't know how it's possible. In the amateur divisions, we did two minute rounds. And if you were in a, you know, in really intense rounds where the striking was heavy and you're mixing the grappling with it, all the heavy exertion of grappling. I was more, you talked about having a heart attack, doing hot yoga. I felt that way all the time. Like I'm going to die. And I watched these guys on TV doing having a heart attack doing hot yoga. I felt that way all the time. Like, I'm going to die.

And I watched these guys on TV doing five-minute rounds after five-minute rounds. And sometimes walking back to their corners after this crazy round with their mouths closed. Yeah. Breathing calmly through their noses. To me, that's the most freakish thing about these athletes. Did you watch Neil Magny this weekend? Well, I know, I actually listened to the Fight Companion. Oh, dude.

Neil Magny's got insane fucking cardio. It's insane. Well, a lot of them do. Benson Henderson. Benson Henderson has these frenetic fights, tons of grappling, tons of striking. He's just never tired. They don't know what it's like to be tired of these guys. Work ethic.

Just insane work ethic and never getting out of shape and never abusing your body and always eating the right foods getting the right rest putting altitude tents up in your house is Neil actually trains at altitude he trains in altitude MMA actually that's his gym in Denver but yeah that's there's an advantage in that for sure there's an advantage in sleeping at altitude right is the big one they actually say that you should like go up to big bear to sleep and come down to like sea level to train. That's what they say. Oh yeah. I see that. Cause that way you could put out more output load and yeah, more work, but you recover because of the sleeping at altitude. Right. Um, we're almost out of time, but what did you, what's the,

what's the biggest thing that you got out of this whole experiment other than a great book which I've heard nothing but fantastic things about this book by the way it's one of the reasons why I wanted to get you in here I've heard that you are incredibly honest in this about your fears and the experience and very eloquent so

the professor in the cage go get this book you fucks it's great I can't wait to read it oh thanks I don't even read hardcover books anymore well like I said you know I when I was writing it I was thinking myself sometimes like you know if Joe Rogan doesn't like this book it means cuz it means I totally whiffed I'm gonna Kindle it too I don't read I just Kindles are so much better to me I I just love that little thing and if I like What are you like making your own firewood

What did you what is the big thing that you got out of this personally or sort of an all the above I mean intellectually is personally right personally, you know, there was I'd been through a sort of lifetime of I don't know like I was a late bloomer as a kid, real small, always sort of the runt of my, in school. I'm a sort of average-sized guy now, but I came to my growth really late. And so I sort of have a basic, you know, schoolboy story about getting pushed around and bullied. And there's no heroism in that story. I always backed down. I always ran for it.

I always found some way out of it. It wasn't because I was a pacifist. It wasn't like I had some noble, high-minded reasons for avoiding the violence. It was that I was scared and I knew I was going to get my ass kicked. But I've always kind of felt like that's no excuse for not for fighting, you know, that you should stand up to the bully. I've always felt that way and even though i never did it so i so so part of what i wanted to do was i wanted to go into that cage and i wanted

to sort of stand up to guys who were stronger than me and more skilled than me and sort of taking those beatings that i felt like i should have taken 20 years ago you know what i mean and so that's deep well yeah you know this is i't know if you've ever had experience like that as a boy, where you behaved in a fashion that you define as cowardly. Yes, definitely. And it's amazing to me. I'm 42 years old now. I've had a lot of accomplishments in my life. I have a beautiful wife.

I have little children who are wonderful. It's amazing to me how much psychological weight that still carries for me that I can still make myself blush thinking back to those moments so part of it was a redemption story for me about whether I could do something to redeem myself at least in my own eyes for those times when I'd flinched

as a kid that's awesome I love that I love that you did that I don't love that you're still blushing over it it's silly it's so stupid it's so, but it just means you've got work to do It's all it is, you know, just got worked before you realize you're not that guy anymore Right, you know, right I I sort of became what I was terrified of that's to avoid Being bullied. I just became someone who's I never got in fights like high school on I never got in fights But I didn't get in fights by becoming far stronger than I ever was before. Yeah. But I

still would think back to like guys that I was scared of when I was in high school, but I never, I never feel like I want to go back now and fucking kick their ass. Like that was surprising that I never wanted to do that. Yeah. And I never wanted to go back like, Hey dude, you remember when you fucked with me? I never wanted to, I never wanted to do that. I always, I was, but I also never carried that burden around. Yeah. Yeah. One time when I was, um, I think it was about like 19 or 20 when I was already a black belt and I was working out at my gym, um, where I used to teach and in Boston and I was just doing these heavy rounds on the bag, preparing for this tournament. And I looked up, and this guy was watching that used to bully me in junior high school. This guy, not even from my high school, but from junior. I went to this really rough junior high school in Jamaica Plain, which is kind of gentrified now, but at the time it was a really sketchy area, Massachusetts.

And I looked up, and I felt bad for the guy. It was really interesting. Instead of being angry at him, I felt bad for him. No, that's right. I mean, all those guys from high school were just kids, too. You know, they were fuck-ups, too. They had their own insecurities. They had their own problems.

They're not bad people. It's stupid to be hung up on it. And I'm not very hung up on it. I don't have any fantasies of going back and beating those guys up. But I do hope they'll read the book. And they'll think, boy, he was a cowardly boy, but he grew into a brave man. The Professor in the Cage, you can buy it right now, and it's available on Amazon,

right? I can get a Kindle version of it. Alright, beautiful. Thank you, John. Really appreciate it. Hey, it was great to come on. I appreciate it, man. Go buy it. Go read it, ladies and gentlemen. The Professor in the Cage. I'll be reading it. I'll be talking about it on a future podcast, I'm sure. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thanks, Joe. cage i'll be reading it i'll be talking about it on a future podcast i'm sure thank you sir appreciate it thanks joe