The Joe Rogan Experience - #675 - Kirik Jenness & Chris Palmquist

Episode Date: July 28, 2015

Kirik Jenness & Chris Palmquist run the premiere martial arts website on the internet. http://mixedmartialarts.com

Alright, we're live. That's it, you don't have to deal with Chris. Don't worry about it. Alright. Carrick, Chris, what's going on guys? Are you paying attention? What are you doing? Hello Chris.

Yeah, I'm good man. How are you? What are you doing, checking your email? We're live, there's a million people. Alright. Jesus fucking Christ. I'm good. Let me see my Facebook.

Oh, I got a like on that picture. I get one here and there. You guys are the head, the owners of my favorite all-time website for mixed martial arts uh it's changed names three or four times since i've been a member submissionfighting.com back in the day right what was the original the uh the original well i grabbed a bunch of urls before the sport really had a name that would have been 95 ish or so one of the ones we grabbed was submissionfighting.com i asked the guys at the gym out of submissionfighting.com mixed martial arts.com and a few other ones what they like SubmissionFighting.com. I asked the guys at the gym out of SubmissionFighting.com, MixedMartialArts.com, and a few other ones what they liked. They said SubmissionFighting.com.

So we ran with that for a few years. But I would get outraged emails from people saying this is not what I was expecting. And what they wanted was one of those sort of porno apartment wrestling kind of sites. And then my mother said she would tell her friends what I was up to. And they'd say, what's the URL? And she'd say SubmissionFighting.com, and she'd get long looks from them. So after my mother started complaining, I changed it to mixedmartialarts.com. Then the UFC switched to UFC TV, so we became MMA TV.

And then the UFC dropped the TV, so we went back to mixedmartialarts.com. That's where we are forever. Although somebody offered us, they didn't complete $600,000 for MixedMartialArts.com, and we would have dropped it in a heartbeat for that and gone back to MMA TV. Why didn't you take it? We did take it. They didn't come through with the money. Oh, they changed.

Yeah. Jesus Christ. It's all yours. $600,000? $600,000. That's insane. Wow. Didn't Business.com go for like $7 million or something crazy like that?

Yeah. What the fuck, man? That's a lot of goddamn scratch. The one that kills me, though, is I turned down MMA.com for $200 at the time. Because the sport really wasn't mixedmartialarts.com. People called it that, but MMA wasn't really a thing yet. It was the main mall association, and they had let it lapse. And for $200, I could have grabbed it. And I'm wasn't really a thing yet. It was the main mall association and they had let it lapse and for $200 I could have grabbed it.

I'm like, eh, $200, it's a lot of money. What year was this? 99 maybe, 98, 99, 97, somewhere in there. Do you remember what year it became called Mixed Martial Arts? The whole sport? I would date

that to when everybody got together, when Nick Lembo got everybody together in New Jersey and came up with the unified rules, which would have been 2000-ish. And that's when the name sort of started to stick. But they were calling it that. Didn't Big John McCarthy name it? I have heard a variety of explanations

for where the name came from, and I honestly don't know I don't think there's anyone that's uh that's that's definitive I'm pretty sure I heard Big John say that he named it it was either him or it was Jeff Blatnick I was here say it yeah more than once Jeff has said that he coined the term I'm gonna have to ask Big John cuz he's up at the San Diego with us. So we get back and see if he claims that. What is going on in San Diego? Kierke and myself are up there for a convention.

It's the Association of Athletic Commissions. It's a blast. It's all the athletic commissions in the country come together for a year and drink and just pretty much talk to each other about the issues that are going on in their ACs. Well, obviously not for a year. How long does it go for? No, sorry, they come together every year. Once a year? Yes. It's like a week event for them.

And they just go over rules and shit like that? It sounds a little, there's a huge amount of socializing, and it sounds a little, that's trivializing it. The thing is, the Association of Boxing Commissions was formed by a federal law, the Muhammad Ali Act. But that law has no teeth. There's no penalties if you don't pay any attention to suspensions. Nothing happens. So the whole association is basically built on goodwill. So there's an awful lot of just people getting to know each other and having a beer.

And Chris often acts as a bartender and gets to know people that way. And it sounds like it's a little trivial just to get to know people, but it's actually the glue that holds the whole ABC together. So that's how it holds together. Like, say, if somebody gets banned in, say, Mississippi, they keep them banned in Massachusetts, things along those lines. That's it, exactly. The Muhammad Ali Act says that requires, federal law requires,

that boxing commissions share suspension information so you can't get knocked out in Boston and then the next weekend go up to New Hampshire and get knocked out again and then go to Maine and get knocked out again. Which used to be a real problem. Oh, yeah, it still is a real problem in places like Mexico. Mexico doesn't hand out suspension, so guys just literally will if they're...

because they're poor. Right. They'll get knocked out every weekend. And their opponent, you know, everybody's... MMA is built on fair fights from the beginning but boxing is built on tomato cans and so there's a huge market for fighters that just lose um and they get knocked out all the time in mexico right like that guy that fought mickey rourke in russia he has this insane losing record and he's homeless somewhere around here actually yeah kind. Guy who lives in the streets

and his job is basically to show up and get knocked unconscious. And didn't even do a good job of it. That was bizarre. It's bizarre that those things still happen. Like, did you see the one in Mexico? The politician that has the fake muscles? The guy with the huge chest. Yeah, that was absolutely bizarre. Have you seen it, Chris?

No, I don't think I've seen it. You need to see it. We'll play it for you. It's a boxing match. Oh, it's ridiculous. You kind of call it a boxing match. It's a guy who has synthol injected into his arms and chest and his shoulders. You know that synthol stuff? If you don't know, people are listening to this.

Synthol is something that I guess bodybuilders created it because if they had a body part that wasn't sticking out enough, that wasn't symmetrical, like say some guys guys their calves don't grow very well so they would have these big upper body his big leg but their calves would be skinny so they would inject this oil into their calves and it makes your muscles swell up but they're like fake boobs they jiggle when you move so this guy has it all over his body. He has it on his shoulders. He has it on his chest. He has it on his arms. And because of that, first of all, his arms are heavy.

It's like he's punching with, like, 10-pound gloves, and the other guy has 8-ounce gloves. And this guy is known for having fake fights. Apparently he has, like, 11 fake fights on his record. And he's a senator in Mexico, he's comes from a wealthy family the guy on the left massive plastic surgery all over his face His whole face looks like a like a fucking kabuki mask But look he's his whole body is like fake and if you turn it up Jamie so we can hear when the crowd sees him Fight they start laughing Like really loud.

Like, give us some volume here. I would fight this guy. Listen to the crowd. Oh yeah, you can hear the laugh. I mean, get the fuck out of here. That's like a sketch from MADtv. Look at this. Look at the way he's throwing punches. It's literally like he's got lead all over his arms because of these goddamn synthol muscles. Like he's carrying pounds of this water stuff,

this oil stuff in his body. I would fight that guy. The guy on the left? Yeah, we'll either one of them, I guess. It's so crazy. This guy's a law graduate. What do you have to do to be a law graduate in Mexico?

Pay the fee? I don't know. I mean, maybe you guys might want to suspend that guy if he's still a lawyer. But, you know, it's so crazy because Mexico is known for its great tradition of fantastic boxers, like some of the greatest boxers of all time

have come out of Mexico it's a huge part of their culture so to have this guy do that this rich guy do that is it's so crazy but that's always existed I believe that was was done in the Philippines I think Mexican fans would pull that guy from limb to limb if he tried it in Mexico I'm pretty sure that was a that that that video was shot in Mexico in the Philippines was it yeah yeah fans are very, very, they're like Philly fans. They know exactly what they're looking at. It's just interesting you said that because the guys who are talking, they sound like they have a Filipino accent.

The guys who are speaking English. I don't know the Filipino accent well at all, but I definitely would defer to you. I play a lot of pool, and some of the Filipinos are the great pool players, some of the best pool players ever from the Philippines. So I'm used to the Filipino accent. The website, you guys started, so you've been around for 20 years now. We started the site in 98.

So I thought you said 95. 95, I started buying the URLs. I think in 96, we had the art of NHB fighting on AOL. So if you started in 98, I was a member, I think, in 98. I think I was a member, like, the first year then. If not 98, 99. No, somewhere I've got our first, I think, first 400, and you're definitely on that list. I'm one of the first 400, baby.

Woo-hoo. How many members do you guys have now? Chris? Oh, jeez. Active hundreds of thousands, probably. Holy shit. We have half a million accounts, but, you know, those people fall off here and there, but a lot. Wow.

We have 1.3 million people that come to our site every month. That's insane. And growing. And growing. Well, it's the best forum, and it's hard to regulate, but you guys have done an amazing job of keeping the douchebags off, or at least keeping them at bay, Because that's what ruins those places. It kicks off all the pro fighters.

Like, so many guys used to post there and don't anymore, like Tito and a lot of other, like Evan Tanner, of course, is a famous thread that gets bumped up every now and then, where Evan Tanner was saying hello before he died. And it was cool back then that, like, these guys who were fighting in the UFC would come on on a regular basis, but they get run off by these just anonymous shitheads who just say the rudest meanest shit to them after they lost or before the fight you know like I've talked to a bunch of fighters like no need to name names but even guys like John Fitch like I don't go there I gotta stay off there because

it fucking fucks up my head like Like, these guys are assholes. They're pretty much all assholes. The problem is... It's not true. They're not all assholes. But when we started, it was a small, tight-knit community of people that were in the sport. And then, you know, the UFC blows up, so people find us. And now it's a million people.

And out of those million people, maybe 10,000 are nice, but the rest are just anonymous douchebags. I don't really think it's that. I think it's the opposite. I think 10,000 are cunts, and the rest of them are fairly nice. But the cunts are very vocal. They're on there all the time, and they just speak up all the time. Well, it's just like they can. I mean, that's the beautiful thing about the Internet.

It's the horrible thing about the Internet. The beautiful thing about the Internet is anyone can talk, and that's the same reason why it sucks. Yeah, that was perfectly put. It baffled me so much, I actually went to a psychiatrist to ask him. There's a psychiatrist who's a friend of family. I'm like, why do people do that? And he said, human beings have all sorts of emotional impulses, and we're constrained by society from acting out on a lot of them.

Maybe you're an unhappy person you want to swear at every single person you see but you can't are you punching the eye or there's other bad feedback but on the internet all that stuff just comes out yeah and you're anonymous so there's no repercussions whatsoever like occasionally you guys hear about that guy on reddit he was a famous you know infamous guy on some of these forums because he would post really inappropriate shit, really rude things, nasty things. And apparently, I don't know if it was anonymous or who went after the guy, but they found his actual identification. They knew who he actually was.

And they contacted his employers and they sent him the posts that this guy was making and he got fired. And they interviewed him and he said it was his release. He said he was just playing a role, and he would show pictures of underage girls and all kinds of really creepy shit. Yeah, I mean, that was his thing. And it was real, in real life. I mean, he got real-life repercussions because he got fired because of it. So it was a big deal eventually.

It doesn't surprise me at all. We have guys email us every week, can you please delete all my posts on your forum? Because they're looking for a job or they just don't want that stuff out in public. I've had that happen on my own message board. But I'm like, dude, your name is like, you know, suck it off 69.

You really think someone's going to find that? It just seems like it seems like a weird place to look now when you started what's what's really interesting about this sport for folks who don't know um mixed martial arts when i came along in 1997 it's one of i first started working for the ufc it was essentially a band sport the only way you could get it was direct TV. That was the only way you could get it. It was banned from cable. And when you would talk to people about it, they would talk to you like you were a horrible person for being involved in such a thing. And the sport stayed alive because of the internet. It was the first sport ever that stayed alive because of the internet. The websites, whether it was SureDog or MMA Weekly,

I don't know when that came along, but there was a bunch of them that came along that that was how we found out about the sport. That's how we found out about the pride shows and K-1 and all the different fights that were going on in Japan and in Brazil. The only way to find out about them was the internet. So we were all really active. And you would go to these forums and you would try to find out, you know, what is happening? What's going on now?

And a lot of times, you know, you would be able to buy tape. I used to get tapes from a dude in Canada. A friend of mine in Canada had a friend. And this dude contacted me, a dude named Brian. And I would buy tapes from him. He would get them from Japan. And he would send them down to me in California. I still have a gang of them.

And it was like all Genki Sudo's, old fights, and Kid Yamamoto, like in the early days. And it was really, it was such an underground sport. It's one of the reasons why the name of your website was so perfect, because it was the underground of the underground sport yeah i agree 100 i actually many many years ago maybe 15 years ago i tried to get wired magazine to do an article on it because they did maybe it was 10 years ago they did an article on the role of the internet in revolutions in countries and that was that was starting i was like hey i got a sport that was saved by by the internet and I sent them some cool pictures, and they were like, oh, those are cool pictures, we're not interested.

But I agree 100%, and I try to get some notice of that in sort of the tech community, or at least as much of the tech communities I know, which was, it was in his Wired magazine. Well, there wasn't very many other sports I can claim that, none that I could think of. I mean, what other sport first of all there's never been a sport in our life that has grown the way mma has there's nothing nothing even close they tried it with soccer didn't take i mean there's been a bunch of attempts

remember when they had that basketball game they used to play on uh trampolines oh they still play that game i've seen it on espn like seven before before. It's still on at 1 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday. That's what they used to have, like PKA Karate. PKA Karate used to be on at 1 o'clock in the morning. The kick of the 80s. The kick of the 80s, that's right. That's what they called it. But there was no sport

in my lifetime that grew like MMA did, from complete total obscurity to the cover of ESPN or the front page of CNN, the cover of Sports Illustrated. That shit never happened. There's never been a sport that blew up like that. And when it was at its worst, when it was at its most desperate time, it was sites like yours, really, that kept it alive.

Yeah, Ultimate Athlete Magazine listed, again, this is going back 10 or 12 years, because they tried to compete with the UFC with a show also using the term Ultimate, and they got sued and disappeared. But before they disappeared, they gave out, they did the 20 most important things in the history of the Internet, and number eight was the Underground. And they were like, if not for the Underground and several other sites, the sport might have died. And then they went on to discuss exactly what you are because it had been banned from television and everything. Well, at one point in time, the Underground had more posts than the Underground.

Oh, it still does. Does it? Well, it got to be so much our server got full. So we killed the Underground one day and everybody got mad at us. But it's there more or less even now. We have to prune it. It's so much traffic. But we have to like every 30 days just delete them

because it's stupid. It's these guys that work 9 to 5. They don't even give a shit about MMA. They just found a space in the Internet with some friends, and they just stay there all day. Some psychos. When I worked 9 to 5, that's all I did all day. I was an IT guy.

I was just OG all day. That is the thing about people that have desk jobs where they're not being watched. The amount of productivity that's lost today because the internet is off the fucking charts. It is absolutely absurd. If you look at our stats, we're only popular during work days. Weekends, nobody bothers. They're having fun. They're going to a barbecue or taking a jog or whatever.

Nighttime, they're kissing their girlfriend. It's people at work all day long. It's amazing how much time is being wasted. People are getting paid by the hour to surf to other ground. And look at girls' asses. Look at one of those 9,700-page ass threads that you guys have. It's a testament to how things are screwed up in

American management, though, that it's allowed. I mean, nobody should be able to go on the internet during the workday because they're not going to be doing work. They're going to be... Well, listening to this podcast right now, there's a huge amount of people at work with headphones on that aren't doing any fucking work at all.

They're just kicking their feet back. They might have like a folder open like they're pretending to pay attention to some fucking spreadsheet. But really, they're just listening to us. That's normal. I know that there's a little thing you can download for your computer. So at the touch of a button, a spreadsheet pops open and makes it appear as if you're working hard.

So your boss comes and looks over your shoulder and, bing, spreadsheet. And you go back. I've only worked with Keurig since 06. Before that, I was just an IT guy. Graduated college, regular IT job. But I was into the sport, and so I would work IT 8 to 5. And I had the underground up all the time, or I was doing work for him, like on the side. And I had a button on the floor that was attached

to USB and when I tapped it like an Excel spreadsheet would pop up and like another document so it looked like I was working so if like a boss came in behind me tap the button looks like I'm working but I'd really just be OG and I'm working on something else all day your boss is listening right now he wants his fucking money back yeah probably I think I owe him

like 40 grand a year for three years or something that really is a it's a giant issue now another giant issue that you guys must have come across is bandwidth i mean how much bandwidth does that site use and how much does that cost every month uh i remember when i the the first time i ever noticed bandwidth was an issue was 75 a month and this probably would have been 99 or something i I was like, oh my God, $75 a month. This is insane. And then an ex NFL player owned a snake store in Colorado. And he kind of heard I was having this huge $75 a month bandwidth issue. And so he said, you know what? Put a banner on your site for my snake store in Colorado I'll give you 75 bucks a month I was like oh my god this is money this is commerce and what do we pay now

Chris three thousand a month or something for it three thousand a month three thousand a month in bandwidth yeah hosting bandwidth all that fun shit that's insane and that's not including the you know the capital costs yeah and we still go down when something crazy happens, like fight-related. Just get too much traffic? People say, like, Greg is about to break the Internet or something, and it happens all the time. Kimbo's broken the Internet more than once. Kimbo. Just big moments.

They tend to break things. Now, when you go to the underground, if you go to Mixed Martial Arts, I've almost said MMA.tv. If you go to MMA.tv, it still goes there. It redirects if you go there, yeah. Yeah, we pay $500 a year to keep that, just because half the people still type it in when they go to a browser. Well, my browser used to be programmed to it. I would hit M, and that would fill it, and I would click that, and then it would forward to MixedMartialArts.com. But you got a bunch of banners.

Like you have Mazda ads, and do you guys have to actively seek those out? No, we have a company that pretty much reps all the ad inventory. So we've made some deals ourselves, like with the endemics, like the Rev Gear and DraftKings and Request a Test, Fox, but someone else just sells the rest. And so now is this your job entirely for both of you? Yeah, absolutely. 100%. That's wild, isn't it? Like at one point in time, this must have been been a frivolous thing that you were doing. For him, it was, yeah. For the first decade or something.

Occasionally, we would get ahead by a few hundred dollars, and then there'd be some local fighter I know who got a chance to fight in Nebraska. I had a guy who got to fight in Nebraska, so I bought him an airplane ticket. That's what we would use with our super profits. And then I don't know when it when it turned pro 2008 maybe 2008 yeah we brought in chris and chris kind of got some good deals and all of a sudden i was like oh my god we can make more than 75 a month yeah when i came on board they were like we have this website it gets a million views a month we make a hundred dollars a month and i'm like i think you

can make more than that so he's's like, hey, try it. Do it and you get a job. So I reached out to Tap Out, the big guys in the space, and I made big deals. These guys were like, you guys should go ask Tap Out for $800 a month. And I'm like, let's go ask them for $8,000 and see what happens. And sure enough, Tap Out bit at the time and

it kind of took off from there. It's actually a true story and the numbers are not exaggerated in the least. We were literally like kind of angling for $800 a month, and Chris literally said $8,000 a month, and they literally bought it, and we signed a contract. It's probably the greatest day of my entire life. Tap Out is a great example of the oversaturation of the market. Tap Out at one point in time was cool to wear.

I know a lot of people have a hard time believing that. 1998, sophomore year of high school i ordered the tap out shirt from in your face.com and i thought i was the shit it said like submit to tap out to cry uncle to it was like i was like this is awesome i wore it once a week to school because i thought it was the best thing in the world i thought it was so cool and you wouldn't catch me dead in the tap out shirt before like nine years ago. So now you can't catch you dead in tap out shirts? No, not a chance.

What happened? I think they got related to the douchebag aspect of MMA fans. There is that whole big culture of douchey MMA fans and tap out and affliction. They all got kind of stuck in that. I don't know how it happens. Well,

at a grappling tournament, again 15 years ago or something, I had an interaction with a guy that stuck with me ever since. I had made some call in some match, I think it was his match, not one of his students, he's got a big school up in Canada now, and he was arguing with me that I made the point wrong.

And I was like, dude, it's just grappling. Come on, man. And he looked at me and he goes, look, this is what we do instead of having health insurance. And I just got cold and I apologized and I listened to what he said. But there's a... What? He said grappling is what I do instead of having health insurance. So he pays for grappling instruction instead of having health insurance.

He was so serious about his lessons at Henzo's that he had moved from Canada, moved from Canada to New York, was taking lessons at Henzo's. He's a black belt now. He's probably a blue belt or a purple belt then. I was reffing a match. I probably made a wrong call. He lost. I was telling him it's not that important. And he said this is what I do instead of having health insurance.

I can't do both. That's how serious it is for me. And there's a, it's not that important. And he said, this is what I do instead of having health insurance. I can't do both. That's how serious it is for me. And there's a hardcore fan base of the sport that's like that. Like, if you were like, okay, health insurance or never discussing or having anything to do with MMA, they're sorry health insurance, hope I don't break my leg. But that's the hardcore fan

base. Around them, there's millions of knuckleheads that also buy the apparel and stuff and eventually the knuckleheads outnumber the the hardcores and and uh and it doesn't work the one huge except one of the huge exceptions that those roots of fight it's just an unbelievable company they the very first time i saw one of their uh their things i'm wearing one right now you're wearing one right now i wear their shit all the time i have the one jackets too yeah i've got one in my i've got one in time. I have one of their jackets, too. Yeah, I've got one in my suitcase right now. They managed to do it with integrity.

I think I see their apparel around a lot. And to me, at least, they still have complete integrity. If the president and the entire Senate was wearing it, I'd still be like, yeah, Roots of Fight is awesome. Well, Roots of Fight takes fight takes old like fight promo posters and turns them into cool t-shirts and all like this one this is the actual sign for the gracie academy in like the 1950s and this is amazing to to me it's like a little piece of history so i don't think they're ever going to go out of style but there's certain there's a certain douchey element that's attached to the t-shirt world of of mixed martial arts because it became a way that guys that sort of identify with the

sport like uh there's one that i always cite there's a real shirt that i saw in new jersey this guy was wearing a shirt that said some guys grapple some guys strike um both i was like oh you're disgusting. I actually know that company, yeah. Some guys are strikers, some guys are grapplers. On both. My favorite MMA t-shirt of all time is, Kip did a runoff of it, but a couple companies have, my girlfriend

loves to grapple, but you should see her box. My favorite MMA t-shirt I've ever had. I think I still have it in the closet somewhere. That's a good shirt for Boston too because the word box is synonymous with vagina in Boston. And one of those, it's one of those weird things that somehow or another- Is it just a Boston thing? I did not know that that was just a Boston thing. I just assumed it was worldwide.

It's spread. We've spread it. We've spread it across the world. But I think it came from our neck of the woods I think box was like Maybe a Kleenex because it's like the box with this hole in the middle how it is hands tits were cans for a long time Right what is that? I don't make any sense Right any of the nicknames for tits make sense, probably. Boobs. They look like boobs.

Did you ever think at one point in time of not keeping that site going? Was there any time where it was becoming too expensive or too much of a pain in the ass and you were just like, ah, fuck this place? No, the worst of the sport is in some ways when I was the most dedicated to it. When the sport got off of pay-per-view, and there was like three pay-per-views in a year, and that was more or less it, hook and shoot. Jeff would put on a couple of hook and shoots a year.

It was almost nothing. I figured the sport was going to die on a national basis, and then we would just sort of build it up over 40, 50 years, and I'd be dead at the end of it. But I believed in the sport. I always have. And I thought it would build up from the bottom up. up and so I thought the internet at the time at least was incredibly important to do that so when the sport was at its lowest I was I was actually the most

excited about keeping the uh keeping the site going I've definitely never uh never for a single moment wanted to turn I wanted to turn it off because all the jerks Well, I always had loyalty to your site for a couple reasons. One, because it was one of the first ones I've ever joined, and it was one of the places where, like I said, you would get guys like Josh Barnett would post on there. Tito Ortiz. Yeah, a lot of guys. A lot of big guys.

Randy back in the day. Yeah. Dan Henderson. Dana White would be on it all the time back in the day. Dana's still on it every day. He just doesn't do it. He doesn't post anymore? How do you know?

Because he calls me about once a week to complain. Oh, Jesus. Legit. Does he complain about, like, posts that are up? Here and there, yeah. He shouldn't have spread that. He's getting a match. No, just as people are, like, making things up about him. He doesn't like that. People right now are going to be making things up right now because they know that you guys are here.

Right. I mean, when he says stuff that he says it they don't he doesn't care But if somebody twists his words and make something up he gets upset about that's why people do it for fun. Yeah I mean they're gonna continue to do it now Dana Jesus Christ Christian threw you under the fucking bus I feel like yeah, I'm gonna get a call in like 10 minutes. Like, you're fired. I always had loyalty for two reasons. One, because of that. But two, because Carrick and I, we know people from Massachusetts. Like, we knew, like, we're probably pretty close to the same age. I'm 47.

How old are you? 54. 54. We, in that time period, we knew a lot of the same martial arts people. Like, I'd heard about you. I'd heard about your school in Western Massachusetts. Western Massachusetts was always the home of Larry Kelly, who's like a really well-known karate guy.

He was my business partner for 20 years. And he was really popular or famous rather for knocking out Billy Blanks back when Billy Blanks was a fucking superhero. I mean, he was the point karate guy. And that's another one where they dusted a guy off and made him fight again. If you watch that fight with Billy Blanks, Larry Kelly KOs him with a hopping hook kick to the face. And Larry was famous for his hook kick, which is a really hard shot. It's a hard kick to generate force with because your hips have to start out here and then

they have to switch that way it's a weird motion whereas like a round kick seems more natural like kinetically but larry had it down he and he hook kicked billy blanks in the face and sent him flying he skid across the the mat he was completely unconscious and they waited for him to wake up and then they were literally trying to get him to fight again That's how this is it right here. Oh here. It is watch this. This is Like when people talk shit about the hook kick I say well I'm gonna show you something here first of all bill superfoot Wallace and boom that I mean come on son Look at that. I mean that was beautiful one more time look at this the hop boom

And he disguised it behind the back fist or a jab or whatever he was doing with his front hand. Beautiful. And when they dusted him off after that, if you watch the actual full video, they waited for a long time. They were trying to get him to go back in there and fight again, which is how stupid people were back then. They had no knowledge. which is how stupid people were back then. They had no knowledge. When we were coming up and we were talking before the show started about guys who had been knocked out in the gym

and all these people that we know, people get knocked out, they would dust you off and push you right back in there. Like that day, five minutes later, like right here is Billy. They're warming him up. They're like, wake up, Billy. Wake up, wake up.

He's like, I think I got a dream. It's called taibo smelling salts in his nose and there was a there's a bunch of these guys there was him and a bunch of other guys like him that were these really big super muscular guys that were involved in the point fighting circuit and they got real good at leaping in and tagging you. And you're starting to see that skill emerge in MMA. I know there's a guy who fights for Bellator. His name is escaping me right now.

He's a... Venom. What's his name? Yeah. Venom, yeah. Michael Page, right? Michael Page. Yeah, that's it.

And he has that style. And then, of course, you've got Raymond Daniels, who's fighting in glory, who's really picking up the kickboxing game, who also was a great fighter in the point karate circuit. And he's got that style, that leap in style. And the ability to cover distance, the ability to jump in and cover distance in a way that you can't. There's a lot of guys that are sticking to that Muay Thai style, sort of flat-footed tiago silva plod ford sort of style and that shit is not flying anymore you got these guys like tj dillashaw that are now using that neo footwork style

but the raymond daniel style i think that's the next level i think you've got that style of leaping in on top of the neo footwork style because that ability that those guys had of just closing the distance really quick with that karate-style blitz, I still think that's a missing aspect in a lot of MMA. Machida had it a little bit. He has an element of that, but he was more of a counter-striker. But I think Larry Kelly, in that video like demonstrated like why that can be like super effective like that it actually came originally came into the the sport of a point fighting from uh bruce lee and bruce lee picked it up from uh from fencing bruce lee

watched all kinds of he watched boxing he loved muhammad ali the same way dominic cruz did try and pick up things from him and he watched fencing and fencers have the quickest footwork and handwork that I personally have ever seen. They just explode forward. And he picked it up, and he showed it to a karate guy named Joe Lewis. Not the boxer Joe Lewis, but a karate guy named Joe Lewis. And Joe Lewis started smashing everybody with it, and so everybody else picked it up. And then the point fighting in karate where you stop every single time you land something, which is kind of nutty, started to dissipate.

And people started doing what's called continuous point, where you weren't trying to knock each other out. You were trying to land super clean shots without a knockout, but you kept going. And that's where Daniels came from and Michael Venom Page and guys like that. I do think that it can be applied to the sport. And then in a couple of years, people learn how to counter that and something new will come along. But when you can do something new in the sport, you get a little edge for a while, like Machida did with his traditional Shotokan Karate, those long, long lunges forward and sort of jabbing super hard and throwing that right hard. He had an advantage over

everybody until he started bringing karate guys in and they're like, okay, it's not that tough to shut down. Once guys figure out what they're doing, you know, once you find a guy who's really good that you can spar with, then you can kind of time it. But until then, it's like, what is this new style of movement that I have in front of me that I don't know anybody moves like this, and it's super hard to judge, super hard to judge the timing. I got to watch it organically, most notably through

grapplings. I started reffing grappling in the late 90s for my best friend Kip Kolar with Naga. And I would watch as new grappling techniques would get introduced. When I started, nobody knew what a heel hook was. And then a few guys would learn a heel hook and guys didn't know how to tap. They didn't know what break your leg if you didn't tap. And there'd be these horrific injuries of guys spinning the wrong way from heel hooks. And now hardly anybody taps to a heel hook. It's not that tough to get out of. Unless Paul Harris gets you. Unless Paul Harris gets you.

Then you're in trouble. That motherfucker. Jesus Christ, he's terrifying. Or Eddie Cummings or Gary Tonin. There's a new level of guys that are coming at the grappling circuit out of John Donahue School. And it's like this new level of leg locks. Like leg locks are really permeating all of grappling and jiu-jitsu now in a very new and strange way. I've had some interesting conversations with Eddie Bravo about it where Eddie really ignored leg locks until a few years back.

And then started incorporating it. And a lot of it is because of the success of a lot of these East Coast guys. Like I said, Gary Tonin, Eddie Cummings, and a lot of it is under the tutelage of Donaher. But there's a lot of guys in grappling that are really getting good at it. And, of course, in MMA, it was Paul Harris. It really kind of opened up a lot of people's eyes. Yeah, it's funny you brought it up. I'm going to train with Eddie tonight down in L.A.

And I told someone that, and they're like, yeah, he's been really working on his leg locks lately. So that's what you need to look out for. My gym, coincidentally, we've been doing leg locks forever. Like Joe Lozo and those guys, that's their brother and brother. They've been doing flying heel hooks for 10 years. And it all came from a guy named Donnie Banville in Fall River, who's actually passed now, but he grew up with a Japanese mother in judo. He was like the leg lock king, and this was like 2002. We were like, what the fuck is a leg lock?

He came into our gym, and he taught us rolling toe holds. He taught us to fly in leg lock, inside, outside the heel, all that stuff. We were like, this is awesome. For years, our gym was a competitive advantage. We knew leg locks. So we'd meet guys in grappling tournaments and fights with leg locks, and they had no idea what was going on. Do you guys remember Scott Adams?

Yeah, of course. Scott Adams. Yeah, and he was one of the guys who trained with Chuck way back in the day. He was known as a leg lock master. Back when no one knew what the hell leg locks were, he was one of those guys that you would hear about and you would go to him. There was a few of those guys. Frank Mir had some real good leg locks way, way back in the day.

And that fucked him when he fought Ian Freeman. Remember that? He was going for the heel hook. I was live in London for that one. Were you really? Yeah. Wow. That was when I wasn't working for the UFC.

I was watching that at home. And I remember that was the issue with leg locks was that when someone would attack a leg lock, you would have both your arms committed to the leg lock so you wouldn't be able to defend against punches. And as you know, with a guy like Ian Freeman, it only takes one to scramble your fucking senses. And then a couple, I mean, Frank got hit by like four or five in a row.

Boom, boom, boom. He just was gone, you know. And it's interesting to see that the progression of these techniques, how it changes and how it morphs. And one of the things like from like if you look at a guy like Larry Kelly or you look at like a lot of these traditional karate techniques, those techniques were kind of looked at like those don't work anymore. But now you're seeing so many of these traditional martial arts techniques. Like front kicks to the body are now standard. Like Conor McGregor ruined Chad Mendes with front kicks to the body.

Just jabbing him with those front kicks to the body. And the spinning back kick to the body. You're seeing a lot of guys throw those kicks to the body now. You're seeing a lot of wheel kicks. That Wonderboy Thompson fight, we fought Jake Allenberger. Holy shit. Holy shit. I mean, you're seeing these traditional techniques that are just super effective

when you get them in the hands of a guy like Edson Barboza, when you get them in the hands of a guy who knows all the other things. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. At various points, I have thought, okay, the sport is done. We've sort of got this body of knowledge, and we've just got to refine what we've got, and we're not going to be seeing a lot of new stuff coming in. And every time I had that thought, six months later, something had come along, and I would be proven wrong, including super simple things like the arm and guillotine.

When it first started happening in grappling tournaments, I was reffing. First time it really hit me hard, I was reffing in Hawaii. A guy stuck in an arm and guillotine. I thought it was a front headlock. In Inaga, you give points if somebody gets close to a tap. And I'm standing here. Like, there's nothing going on. It's a front headlock.

I don't care. It's not going to. And the guy went to sleep. I was like, oh, shit. Remember Pete Sell and Phil Barone Pete Sal put Phil Barone asleep and Phil said after the fight He goes I didn't know that you could get put to sleep in one of those right because we didn't know it wasn't that he was Ignorant we didn't know yeah, but Matt Sarah who was Pete sells coach knew they were a little bit ahead

Is the jiu-jitsu's hens or Gracie black belt a little bit ahead? You know a little bit ahead of everybody when I started learning jiu-jitsu is Hens or Gracie Blackbell. A little bit ahead. A little bit ahead of everybody. When I started learning jiu-jitsu, I was told, you're safe if the arms in your front head are guillotined. Oh, just hang out and let go and you're good. You're always safe. They figured out how to get up high on the neck. That's what happened. When guys started getting that guillotine, they would lean back

like a regular guillotine and it didn't work. But now when they get up high on the neck, man, it just shuts the lights out. If you got a good grip. There's also different grips. Like this is a big one that a lot of guys are using. This pretzel grip where you wrap around this way. It seems awkward until you have someone's neck in there. And then for some reason it feels amazing.

Yeah, I know. Jake Shields likes it. I learned it from Denny Propagos, who was a big fan. He's a big fan of adding, incorporating all kinds of weird grips to it. Different people have different grips that they use with techniques. And it's amazing how just those little subtle adjustments have a huge impact on the efficiency of the technique. How much leverage you can get into the technique. Yeah, I think Tom Waller told me that was his grip one day.

And I was like, I'll try it. It seems weird, but I like that grip now. It's a great grip somebody somebody won in Mexico with a guillotine and then you know did like motion to the camera they went like this and they were like no no no like this like he like did it to the camera showed after he got the tap I get the name escapes me who it was but uh that's it's fascinating to me all the different techniques and the different variables and we're seeing that even with the traditional martial arts techniques there's still a lot of things that guys are doing wrong with like traditional kicks like side kicks

and spinning back kicks or turning side kicks there's still a lot of guys that have the knee down instead of the knee up they don't lift the knee high enough because it takes a long time to learn how to do that but when you you do do it, then you get that thrusting kick, which just has so much more power. Like Barboza. Like you see Barboza's turning side kicks this weekend? He lifts that knee up high and it comes straight

at you. That motherfucker kicks so fast. Can you imagine getting kicked square in the dick? What's his name did from that spinning back kick? Heel right to the dick. I don't know what kind of cup he has, but if it's one of those diamond MMA ones or one of those Thai steel cups. Yeah, the diamond ones are supposed to be like you can run them over with a car and they don't move. Do you have one?

Yeah, that's what I use. They're incredible. They're great. Do you have one, Kier? Yeah, they're 100%. I can actually do one of those kick-me-in-the-jimmy skits and you can get kicked in the jimmy and it actually is okay. They have like this commercial. They put an apple in the cup on the ground and they run it over

with a regular cup and it gets destroyed. Then they put it on the diamond cup and they run it over and the apple's fine. They're legit. 4,000 pounds of a car or whatever. Yeah, it's interesting because all these little problems that people used to have, and they still have.

There's a lot of guys that still have shitty old cups. Like, I don't know what Felder was using, but it looked to me like a regular jockstrap and a cup that you'd buy at fucking a sporting goods store. $10 shock doctor or something cup. I was cornering Roxanne a few years ago at a Strikeforce, and we were at a— I think we were just taking a long walk to shit our nerves off. Roxanne Montefiore? It was the same one where Fedor knocked out Rodgers. And I think...

Come on. Spit it out. Has some mental health issues right now. In this sport? Yeah. He's a long list. Yeah, Jesus Christ. Mayhem Miller. Mayhem Miller, sure.

I ran into Mayhem Miller and he had his cup and it was just a cup that you would buy for $14.95 at Dick's Sporting Goods or something. The metal cups are... I think they're the best because if you kick them, you get a broken toe and if you figure four somebody's body, you can dig the metal cup into their spine

and they'll tap just from that. I don't even grapple with all with the cup now i feel like i'm not confident like i go to like move and i'm like ah just cup can't well the metal cups are banned from a lot of grappling tournaments because they offer a weapon yeah it's a weapon it's it's um it's like a leverage point like a fulcrum point especially for arm bars oh it's like you're you have a rock there It's a completely different point of leverage than you would have if it was just your dick I want I wonder if that's how big Tim's forearm broke when mere did I wonder if he had a metal cup on it He could have forearm over the edge of the the metal cup. I never thought about that It's very possible why guys fight with Thai cops steel cut steel

I tell everybody to like Joe Lozon has this back mount, and he calls it broke back mount. So he gets the hook set, right? And then he's got the hook set. He flattens you flat on the ground. Then he scoots his ass back, so like his cup's in your asshole, pretty much. And it's terrible. I've tapped out to it, because he just drives forward with a hard cup, and it feels like you're getting fucked in the ass. So you've got to just pretty much tap out.

Well, you kinda are. There's probably no penetration, but it's pretty close. That's so rude. It's fucking terrible. But you can't move. You're stuck because you can't push your hips up to the sky. It's terrible. Well, there's some moves that are still legal in grappling, like oil checks.

Those are illegal, right? No, that's legal in NCAA wrestling. That's wrong. You are literally shoving your fingers in a man's asshole to control him and they move because of that because it fucking hurts it's horrible it's weird that you could do that but you can't just grab his dick you know you want to really manipulate a guy grab his dick you can move them around I mean if you think about it if a fish hook is illegal right why should people put your finger in a guy's butt i mean that's totally should be 800 more times illegal don't you think there's a bunch of stuff that needs to be changed in the rules like downward elbows that is just dumb as fuck every time i'm at a show i watch

the ref try to explain that where you can't elbow a guy yeah and every ref is different and under the corners like what are you talking about? Like there's like a fucking mohawk. Oh no no I mean that's the area. 12 to 6. 12 to 6. Yeah okay.

The 12 to 6 elbow was banned because and Big John McCarthy told me this that when they first brought the sport to the athletic commissions they said okay you can do anything

but you can't do this downward elbow strike because I saw a guy on ESPN break bricks in a karate tournament. So they thought that this was the most powerful strike known to man. Meanwhile, you got Barbozo

wheel kicking Terry Edelman to another dimension. And that's legal. And also like the back of the head. Like I get the fact that you don't want people to get hit in the back of the head. But here's the reality. Almost every head kick is landing in the back of the head. That's why guys go out because the foot wraps around and hits them in the back of the head. Yeah here's the reality. Almost every head kick is landing in the back of the head. That's why guys go out, because the foot wraps around

and hits them in the back of the head. Yeah, it's a big part of it. A big part of the impact is the instep or the shin literally hitting that spot where everyone tells you not to hit when you do ground and pound with little short punches. I mean, it's kind of funny. Like, someone's telling you you can't hit a hammer fist in the back of the head, you know, when your arm is half tied up and you're trying to do that,

and they're like, watch the back of the head. But meanwhile, when you're standing, you just crank it with all that thigh meat and bone and 50 pounds of leg behind it, and boom! That's legal. It's very strange. The thing about the back of the head that a lot of fans don't know is that both players have a responsibility. And that what usually happens, especially with those kicks,

is the kick starts to come in and people shy away from it because the kick's coming in and they expose the back of their head and then they get knocked out. But both players, both fighters fighters have a responsibility about that back of the head stuff and if a shot comes in that if you hadn't moved would hit you in the side of the head and then you move and your back your head starts to get exposed it's kind of on you well the same on the ground as well right yeah when a guy's pounding on you on the ground and you're moving your head away

from the punches to your face and he hits the back of your head and the referee says watch the back of the head, and then the referee says, watch the back of the head. Well, you were already launching that punch before the guy turned. It's kind of not really your fault. Yeah, agreed 100%. Is there a lot of science behind the back of the head thing? I mean, isn't it bad to hit any part of the fucking head? I don't think any part of the head is not good to hit. It came from boxing.

It was called a rabbit punch in boxing going back to before. It's always been illegal from boxing. It was called a rabbit punch in boxing going back to before. It's always been illegal in boxing. I had a weird one two years ago at the Association of Boxing Commissions Convention. I spoke with a surgeon who was one of the ringside physicians group heads. And I was like, I asked about this exact thing. This exact thing we're discussing. I said, you know, how dangerous is the back of the head? And he said, you know, the one that I'm worried about is right here. He said that...

The forehead. Well, that we're the... Apparently, I didn't know anything about it. When we're little kids, the bones haven't quite grown together. And as you get a little older, up until two years old or something, all the bones come together and they form in a little spot right here. something all the bones come together and they form in a little spot right here but the um but the he he thinks that there's actually a weakness in being hit right here and in the 80s i remember being at master toddy's muay thai studio in manchester england and we watched a videotape and toddy said that guy died on the tape and i was like holy god how did he die and it was a downward elbow right to here it's like it sounds like a silly sort of a blood sport thing.

But that jumping downward elbow right to this spot here is illegal in Muay Thai. So it may well be that that's actually. That's illegal? Yeah, the single downward or the double downward where they jump up and come right down and hit right here is illegal. So that's so strange that the forehead would be an illegal target in Muay Thai. That seems so bizarre. With an elbow. With a downward elbow.

With a downward elbow. But what about like a slashing elbow? Totally fine. Cut away. But it seems like... It's the downward one. But even a hard one, like a strong elbow, it's still... I mean, it's not that specific.

If you're hitting someone in the forehead, is that dangerous? It may be as simple as a few times, guys... Well, a lot of times in muay thai guys have been downward you know winging elbow across the head and they didn't die they just got a big cut and then somebody actually passed away from the straight downward and they were like we're not doing that but the problem is in muay thai you're not dealing with the most stringent athletic commissions or doing mris and cat scans and making sure the people have their EKGs in order. There's none of that going on. So who knows why the fuck that guy died.

And a lot of people speed, and they take speed before they do Muay Thai. What? Yeah, that's pretty common. Kids died of it. In Thailand? Yeah. Several younger fighters died from it. They would take speed.

I mean I don't some kickboxers back in the 80s. It took speed for the same reason you kind of train harder You get more aggressive. You're more angry you feel painless. Do you remember rip fuel? Yeah, I took that shit once and went to jiu-jitsu class. Oh my god. I almost fucking died My heart was pounding was a thump thump thump thump and I was like I gotta sit down Yeah, like I gotta sit down yeah like I've never been it wasn't tired it wasn't a tired thing it was like my heart was racing I was like I shouldn't be this tired my heart shouldn't be beating like this and then try that in a fight

when you're adrenalized and you're bleeding and he's bleeding the referee's screaming there's 2,000 people screaming and imagine what your your heart would have done yeah guys have guys have died from well people did die from ripped fuel. It's one of the reasons why. I mean, I remember taking it, and I remember I rolled with a couple guys, and then I had to sit down, because I was really concerned.

I was like, this is not like me being a pussy. There's something going on here. And then I heard about all these people dropping like flies, and then they pulled it off the shelf, and then they made it illegal. But I would take it before I would lift, and I'd feel like fucking Superman. I'd be like, Superman. But lifting,

you're doing sets of six or whatever the hell you're doing, it's not taking you that long. When you're doing a nine minute roll, that's when the heart really starts getting taxed and it just can't recover. It can't calm down. You're confusing the signals with that goddamn speed. A friend of mine had a little, I don't want to

call it a seizure, of mine had a little, I don't want to call it a seizure, but he had a little seizure while we were driving. We were driving in Honolulu, and all of a sudden, he just kind of pulls over and freezes and shakes, and it was from ripped fuel. It's the kind of word, you know, if we'd been on the highway, I don't know what would have happened. You would have died.

I would have died. It was a ripped fuel. Or you would have reached over in a fucking heroic manner and sat in his lap and drive due to safety. Yeah, it's interesting how there's all these different like crazy athletic supplements that kind of go by the wayside. They start out being like a Jack 3D was one that I think. Have they pulled that? I don't know if they pulled that.

Because I know that somebody, like guys in the military apparently were taking it. I have a buddy of mine who's in the military and he told me about it. He texted me. He goes, you ever try this Jack 3D? Holy shit, I'm getting big on this. And then like four months later, somebody died on it. I was like, I sent him the article. I'm like, man.

My understanding is that unscrupulous companies will come up with some new formula that's got horny goat weed and oyster meat and who knows what all in it. And they will actually add real anabolic steroids to it. They'll market it. You'll get huge. And then they'll take the steroids out, but the stuff still has a reputation. So it's back? Yeah, you can still buy it. Well, find out Jack 3D. Maybe they changed

the formula or something like that. Just Google Jack 3D deaths. I might have to apologize if I'm wrong. Death. Armies. He was one of them. Death after using Jack 3D points to gap and regulation.

But it could also just be a guy that just died. See, that's the problem. It's like, who the fuck knows what's killing these people? You know, you don't know. People die just jog just jogging they do die they die with nothing in their system They die with just fucking salads right you know and if you the guy died And he would have died anyway, and he just took Jack 3d and died you'd blame the Jack 3d But I don't know a lot of goddamn people take remember red line. It was like a drink Oh, I remember taking that someone's like

here take this let me make you feel great for your workout i thought my chest was gonna blow out of my fucking heart i like i thought i've never done cocaine but i feel like that's what cocaine feels like like it was like and i had to wreck off like four hours and i went home and i was still jacked up i never took it again it was terrifying well that stuff was also like many doses in a little bottle Yeah, like it was drink like a quarter of the bottle. Yeah, but it's not a big bottle So yeah, I can't a coke yeah, you look at it You're like oh, this is a serving but you don't read that who the fuck reads

Labels like those look like this shit in the back like the little tiny I can't first of all I'm 47 my eyes suck Unless I put reading glasses on, I can't read that. So these little things, I'd have to go, okay, how many? Four servings. This is three ounces of liquid. How is this four servings? What am I dividing this with? It's like eating a pint of Ben and Jerry's. They tell you that's four servings, too, but who doesn't eat the whole goddamn pint of Ben and Jerry's?

Yeah, that's ridiculous. But that's like how they get away with, like, you know, when you look at a bag of chips and tells you how many calories there is per serving. Only 100 because you need three chips. But it's interesting how the supplement industry, when it comes to bodybuilding and when it comes to, you know, any athletic training, has really benefited from all these different regulations that get passed where new things become illegal, so they come up with some new thing to kind of fill in the blanks. I'm one of those guys that always, I've never taken very many supplements because I've never made hardly any money from doing it,

and I figured if I was making some money, I would definitely take every supplement on the market because it was worth it. But I was never very good and never probably made more than $200 or something. So for me, it just wasn't worth it. You mean making money from fighting? Yeah, making money from fighting. It just was might as well just go in there and see how you do 100% natural. Let's talk about what's going on right now with MMA, with the testing, because I think it's pretty fascinating.

about the what what's going on right now with mma with the testing because i think it's pretty fascinating that this is a sport where to be completely and totally honest most likely a giant percentage of the population of the people involved in the sport were taking some sort of performance enhancing drugs it seems like to get through a training camp and if you're not familiar with mma one of the crazy things about the sport is that it involves so many different disciplines. You have to learn how to wrestle. You have to learn submissions, meaning joint locks and chokes. You have to learn how to kickbox. You have to learn all these things, and you have to put them all together, and you also have to do a strength and conditioning program. So unlike boxing, where you're learning how to box, and then you're

probably doing a little road work on top of that, but that's mostly it. It means some guys engage in some calisthenic programs. Manny Pacquiao has a famous ab routine you can see him do. Kovalev actually does Pilates, which is kind of interesting. But they don't have to grapple. So for them, what's important is just honing those hand skills, recovering and coming back and honing those skills. It's counterproductive for them to go through the same kind of workouts that the MMA guys do. But for MMA guys, this fucking grind of getting up in the morning every day and doing this for six to eight weeks for a camp,

it's almost impossible to do at the highest levels without some kind of help. And now the UFC has incorporated this rigorous, incredibly intense testing where they're doing randoms five times a year on people. So guys like Conor McGregor, Lyoto Machida, or anybody, they're just going to get tested. They're going to show up at your house. And if you're in camp, this is what's really fucked up to me. Say, if you got to work out at 10 o'clock in the morning and you, you know, you need your sleep, you went to bed at 10, you know, you're, you're looking to get 10, 11 hour sleep and they wake you up. They'll wake you up at five,

six o'clock in the morning, peeing this cup right now. And you have to, and they wake you up. They fuck with your sleep. And you know, yeah, they're only going to do it that one day, but you might go to the gym that one day and be tired because of that. And that might be the time you get injured. It's totally possible. It's totally unprofessional. It doesn't make any sense to me that they're allowed to just wake you up. They should have to do it in an off time, in a time where you absolutely are not going to be getting your rest.

Like you should have parameters. Like you should say, listen, I go to bed at 11 p.m.. Every night. I wake up at 9 30 a.m.. And in those times leave me the fuck alone Because I got to recover god damn it You know but they know they don't do it that way they just come anytime they want and they you have to pull out your dick And being a cup and that's it watch you too. I have to watch you dick. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you could have a rubber dick That's it. They watch you, too. A guy has to watch your dick, yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah.

Because you could have a rubber dick. A whizzer. Kevin Randleman got busted with a whizzenator. Well, Kevin Randleman got busted with non-human urine. Yeah. Well, from the whizzenator, horse urine or something. But guys will do everything to cheat if you're not looking at their dick. You can rub a paste on your thumb and let your stream run through it.

Whizzenators. And the guy's going to stare at your dick. He's going to look at it. Uh-huh. And whizzinators. And the paste. The guy's going to stare at your dick. He's going to look at it. And you're like, the pee's coming out of that dick. And the paste was somehow or another diffused. Yeah, so it would diffuse. You could put it under your fingernails.

Your stream would go through your finger and the paste, whatever the ingredients were, would diffuse the sample or taint it. I think it's a good thing to find out what everyone's taking. I think it's also a good thing to try to figure out what is possible for the human body like what kind of condition can you actually get in without help i mean and if we are really dealing with a sport where 70 let's say 70 vitor says it's like 90 maybe he's right i would say have used at some point it's 90 using right now i have no idea but at some point. It's 90. Using right now, I have no idea.

But at some point in their career, we're using, yeah, it's 90. Do you think that's the case in other sports? I have no idea. I know a fair amount about mixed martial arts, but, like, I wouldn't know which end of a tennis racket to hold. I don't know. Although Chris and I spent the good part of yesterday with two senior guys from USADA. And for hours, they talked about everything that they've gone through since ever since. That's the U.S. Anti-Doping Association.

Yeah, that's the group that the UFC is contracted with to do all the testing. And when we look at it, it does seem completely onerous, but from their point of view, they've been in a decades-long battle against people, particularly in a lot of sports, including maybe most notably cycling, where they told us a story yesterday about one of their testers. And they found this out later, years, years later in deposition. One of their testers shows up at the hotel. Somebody's waiting in the lobby and cell phone's up. The guy is on his way up right now. the lobby and cell phones up. The guy is on his way up right now. The athlete sprints to the doctor's room and the doctor grabbed an IV bag and squeezed it and forced it into him and then

put another one in and squeezed it and forced it. And there was enough extra liquid in his body from that. So his levels were a little kind of weird, but they didn't go over any threshold. And that's the kind of shenanigans that they've been fighting against. And I think that's the origin of that stuff. Like we're going to show up at 3 a.m. and we don't really care about you. In MMA, it does seem completely unnecessary. But from their point of view, with this decades of trying to fight dirty cyclists and things, they feel like that's the corner that they're forced into. Well, cycling is the dirty sport.

It's the dirtiest, I think, right? It has to be. It's one of the dirt the dirtiest is why I saw something the other day and some guy was winning the Tour de France I just started laughing like what's he doing what's he doing what are you doing what are you doing but why you lying who cares they're riding the fucking bike like they ain't trying to hurt anybody let them all do steroids and just see who wins yeah well you can't you can't do that because then the idea is that kids coming up are forced to take performance-enhancing drugs because otherwise there's no way to win that sport.

It's a fake sport. It's a fake sport in that the results that you're seeing are not normal results. They're superhuman results, and they only come about because you take a guy and you alter his chemistry. You alter his chemistry to the point where he's not a human anymore. Like if you look at a bodybuilder, perfect example, and you look at some fucking giant Dorian Yates type character just

veins all over his eyeballs and his fucking face is ripped and he weighs 300 pounds and he's 5'2", it doesn't make any goddamn sense. Like, what is that? It's not a human. It's not a human because the levels that they have in their body are not human levels. This is a new thing.

You've created a new thing with chemistry. Yeah, guys, you know, those bodybuilders will put on 70 pounds of muscle. And as anybody knows who trains, putting on 7 pounds of muscle is hard. It takes years. It takes years. It's just awful. You could put on 10 pounds of muscle in 6 months if you are fucking really diligent. And you've got to push through really hard sore days

you got to do a lot of dead lifting you got to do a lot of squats you got to eat a lot of fucking meat and you got to you got to you got to really work at it but you can do it you can put on most people don't work out that hard but if you get a guy on the juice you could put on i i was on this stuff called mag 10 you used to be able to buy it at GNC. Do you remember this? No. It's like these pills they used to sell at GNC. They were like clear pills. You take like 10 of them. It was like some crazy number.

I put on 10 pounds of muscle in like seven weeks. Jesus. I'm not even kidding. It was legal. It was the strongest shit I've ever taken. And when I got off of it, my dick died like it got hit by a sniper. My dick was useless. My dick was useless for like a sniper my dick was useless My dick was useless for like a month. It just wouldn't work and I was like wow that's that's a steroid That's a real steroid and it was one of those things you could just buy for a little bit

It was like that little window you could buy and then it went away But I'm telling you I never got bigger in my life off of anything other than this stuff and I felt so strong I would go to the gym and like one day I'd be able to get 10 reps and then I would my next workout four days later it was 12 reps didn't make any sense I'm getting an extra two reps in in three or four days like that doesn't make any sense but you would just recover and then I would think about what is it like to take like anadrol 50 or some of the really crazy ones that they say turn you into like a wild silverback gorilla and then stack them right yeah those guys that would take him like i remember uh i knew this dude was

a football player who told me that they would take anadrol 50 and they would take all this different stuff and uh oh no no this is a different guy he's a bodybuilder he told me he was a became a jiu-jitsu guy he became a black belt under uh jean-jacques machado great guy and uh he told me that when he was bodybuilding and he took the Anadrol 50 stuff, he said literally he would see red and then wake up grabbing someone about to kill them. Like some guy said something to him in traffic and before he knew it, he was out of the car reaching into the guy's car ready to kill him. And he was like, what the fuck am I doing?

I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to kill anybody like this but it was this overwhelming rage like for almost nothing just runs you into like an animal like it sets you back like you're strong as a gorilla and you lose that like human party you fucking well you don't think you're not really a person you're some you're like you you're mostly but you've got some other element in you. And the anadrol 50 stuff is apparently, I don't know if it still is, but that was the stuff that people would talk about. Like, if you fuck with that, that's the rager.

That's the stuff. That's the stuff that puts 30, 40 pounds of just stacked, shredded beef on you. Just all those dudes that would You know Do squats And drop the bar And walk away They're barely human

Barely human A guy at my gym In the This is going back Probably early 80s Doing karate Nice guy From a couple towns over

Moved to LA Started bodybuilding Got a girlfriend Got pissed off at her Got a bat Broke her window, and she shot him dead. And he was not a violent guy. He'd never been convicted, never been arrested for any crimes, didn't do anything bad. I really do pin that on him just sticking every steroid he could possibly find in his ass until his brain blew up.

And then his girlfriend literally shot him dead. Well, there's a dude that I knew that died. His name was Curtis, and he was Vitor's original strength and conditioning trainer. Like way back in 97 when Vitor was 19 years old. Remember when Vitor first fought in the UFC? Vitor weighed about 200 plus pounds, like 203 maybe maximum. He was real lean but muscular as hell and fast as lightning. When Vitor first stormed on the scene

We'd never seen hand speed like that with good wrestling and jiu-jitsu, too I mean he just Trey telling men had no idea what was coming He came out guns blazing that guy that was training and we would like Eddie Bravo And I we used to call him garden hoses because the guy had veins that were like garden hoses They didn't make any sense here these arms that were like The guy had veins that were like garden hoses. They didn't make any sense He had these arms that were like I'm not bullshitting five of my arms like maybe five moms rolled up in a cord I mean they were enormous, but he had veins Throughout his arms that were like hoses these huge fucking veins, and he was purple

He would lift weights you do like tricep extensions. It would be purple Just fucking the whole thing is about to blow and one day it did one day. It's just blue pop boom the whole thing just Just left him bleeding internally and it's the whole thing exploded harder brain. It's about the whole fucking Catastrophic failure of everything and he was in his 30s. He was a young guy, you know? And that was when Vitor got up to, like, 240 when he fought Randy Couture. Remember that? I mean, he got just like a lion. He didn't even look like a person anymore.

His head looked like it was attached at the top with a neck. Like, the top of his head was where his neck started. And it just came down. And he just had no gas. His gas tank was for about maybe 30 or 40 seconds of flurrying, and then it would, like, quickly drop off. Was that the fight that ended in, like, a minute with a cut on the eye? No. That was for the light heavyweight title, and that was in the 2000s.

This was way before that. I want to say 97 or 98, and I was there for that fight and uh vitor was like 240 pounds that was when uh everybody thought he was going to kill randy and randy just beat him down took him down smashed him and changed his life like vitor before then was this unstoppable force who destroyed tank abbott and destroyed telegman and scott farozo and everybody was like vitor is the fucking like people were talking about Vitor versus Hickson. There was all this, like, crazy talk back then, you know?

And then Vitor had, like, that downward spiral that he went on for a little bit, where his sister got kidnapped, and all that stuff happened after that. They never found her, right? She died, and she was killed. Unfortunate. Horrible, horrible story. Um, but, uh, but the point being that, like, performance- performance enhancing drugs there then it's not all fun games

Scary shit scary shit and when you force your body to do something totally unnatural like that like the rapid change of putting on 30 40 pounds in literally six to eight weeks like that is for you. That is not good for you at all. So we got to stop that, right? Agreed. But the dialogue is like, what should be legal? It should be legal to take creatine because that helps. Should it be legal to take amino acids because they help? Should you be allowed to take multivitamins?

Should you have to get all your vitamins from food? You know, where does it end? One of the ones in that regard that I've been puzzling about for several years now is Nick Diaz. He used to cut a lot over the eyes. And there's a surgeon in Vegas that will cut your eyes open and grind down your eye orbits so they become less sharp. I don't know. Is that cheating? I mean, he's doing surgery to change his body

so he can be a more efficient fighter. Granted, it's kind of defensive. He's just trying not to get cut, but I don't know. I've been thinking about it for years, and I don't know what the answer is. See, that one I don't have any problem with at all because he was born with just a weird eyebrow,

and also, on top of that he had so much scar tissue from all these fights so it wasn't just a matter of the bone was cutting his it was also a matter of like he had to get that scar tissue removed because it would just burst you know scar tissue if you don't know when you have scar tissue around your eye when something heals up it's measurably weaker than it was before that. But now they have new methods of dealing with that, like Vanderlei. Like before Vanderlei got his surgery, his eyes, he would just get hit once, and it would swell up, and it would, like, come down and almost close his eye, and then it would cut open and start bleeding.

And if you looked at him back then before he had his surgery, his eyes were just a mass of scar tissue, like all around his eyebrows. So it makes everything thicker because you got all these cuts they heal and there's a knot and another one it heals there's a knot and all this time is happening your eyelids are relaxing also from getting hit a lot because the muscles get pulverized and it starts drooping down over your eye so some guys get surgery to sort of raise their eyelids back up and put them in place so they could see better. Because when you're fighting for a long period of time, the palooka look, like you always see it in cartoons,

they get that thing, I'll take your white boy so I'll go knock his brains in. That thing where they would get where the eyebrows would drop down, that impedes your vision. Absolutely. A lot of guys also don't realize that inside of your body takes a lot longer to heal than the outside. So guys will get cut in the gym, and in like three days it looks like it's healed, but it's really still damaged inside.

So they're like, oh, it's not an open wound. I can go back to sparring, and they get hit again, and it cuts open again. It takes a long time for that stuff to heal internally. And it becomes chronic. Yeah. One thing I wanted to throw in, because there's a huge audience here, and I know as a fact a lot of them are fighters, is when you do get cut, don't let, like, the EMT or somebody

just throw three quick stitches in there. Get that cut done by a plastic surgeon. It makes a huge difference. That scar tissue comes from people letting, I've actually seen EMTs, just, oh, I know how to do that, and they'll put three stitches in and not very nicely. So, guys, when you get a really bad cut in a fight, go find a plastic surgeon. It's worth it. Well, Kevin Ross, when he fought in Lion Fight,

he was actually putting pictures on his Instagram. What a shitty job the doctor had done. They stapled him. The staple went in the cut. Like, instead of skin, skin, the staple, this guy was fucking blind. Some old doctor or something stapled literally inside the cut. Instead of on the skin itself, around the cut, to pull the cut together. This fucking idiot stapled the cut.

And now a lot of times they just try to use glue. I cut myself in the winter from a fucking icicle because I live in New England. An icicle cut you? Yeah, my fucking dad wanted me to shovel his roof off because they get water dams that damage. So we're just pushing the ladder up and he bangs an icicle and I just look up and fucking

smashes me in the head. I turn around and scream and then I look at him and he's like you're fucking bleeding. I'm like, what do you mean? I grab my head, fucking blood pouring down my face everywhere. I'm like, holy shit. So I go to the bathroom I'm like holy shit so i go to the bathroom i put my hand on it go to the bathroom and there's a good cut i see a lot of cuts in the gym so i'm like that they fucking need stitches i'm like dad i gotta go i need stitches

he's like no put a band-aid on it finish my roof and then you can go to the er so i put a band-aid on it i climb up the roof shovel the roof go to the er and they want to put glue in it and i'm like i've seen a lot of stitches. Like, can you put stitches in my head? He's like, I think we can get away with just glue. Get away? Well, I box. I want it to be really well closed. He's like, no, I'm just going to put glue in it.

Can you please stitch it? He's like, who's the doctor here? And he just put glue in my head. And it's still a big scar there, and it's just not as... I don't think it's as healing as it would have been if he just ditched it. What's his name? What's his name, this fuck? I don't know.

Yeah, well, he's an arrogant asshole. It was a Brockton hospital, so. Oh, well, Brockton blockbuster. And the part of this- Rocky Marciano, Marvin Hagler. Part of the story that Chris isn't telling you is that like any good person

from Lozon MMA, the minute he got a head cut and he was bleeding all over the place, he did a selfie. Oh, yeah. When you walk into Lozon MMA, they have this little wall was bleeding all over the place, he did a selfie. When you walk into a low zone MMA, they have this little wall of fame.

If I elbow a guy and he gets cut, I'll be like, don't wipe it off. Don't touch it yet. We've got to take a picture first. Then we address the wound and stuff. Why? I don't know. It's kind of like our wall of fame almost. You put a Polaroid up. You've got to move out of Massachusetts. South Shore. You've got to get out.

There are too many animals there. It's just a hostile environment. Joe even said it in an interview this week for his fight. He goes, we're a bunch of pricks at my gym. And it says we're all from the Northeast. They're all pricks. Well, I went to your gym a long time ago. Eddie did a seminar there.

Yeah, our old gym. Yeah, I remember that. Way back in the day. We actually still have the toenail clippers. You used them. We call them the Joe Rogan toenail clippers. I don't think anyone uses them anymore

because they're like dull as shit now but like they're still sitting in a desk somewhere. That's hilarious. We were talking about this before like anybody who

doesn't clip their nails their fingernails and toenails before they grapple that fucking sucks. They scratch the shit out of you. Oh yeah, it's terrible. You're talking about

Nick the Tooth scratching your neck up. Yeah, I think I still have a fucking neck with this. But listen to Nick the Tooth cut your fucking nails dude. I carry a toenail clipper everywhere if I I think I still have a fucking neck with this. But listen to Nick the Tooth. Cut your fucking nails, dude. I carry a toenail clipper everywhere. If I have a bag, I'm going to work out.

Plus, also to make a fist, even though to punch the bag. Yeah, it can hit into your arm. It sucks. Yeah, you don't want your fingernails digging into the meat of your hand. People who don't cut their fingernails and don't take showers before they roll are just bad, evil people. Some people, when they fight, they do it on purpose you could tell they fucking stink some people stink when i interview them i'm like you know they're doing it on purpose

linlin told me does it on purpose no showers for like five days and don't brush your teeth and just get your armpit they call tom waller filthy because he's filthy. It's not like a cute nickname. He's fucking filthy all the time. And just eat food off the ground and not shower and just be gross. And that guy sweats like a motherfucker, so he's always nasty. What do you think about his knockout? That was crazy, man. It was awesome.

I was in the corner for that fight, and I'm watching it from the corner. I'm like, shit, he's getting beat up pretty bad. That motherfucker was big because he fought a 205-er, and then he was way bigger. And I'm just sitting there like, oh, this is not going our way. And the round ends. We go in there, and John Wood, the syndicate guy, is talking to him. He's like, you know, you're doing all right. You're doing all right.

Just stay in it. And then the second round starts, and he hits him with a hook from hell. Like the best hook you could ever hit a guy with. Well, he threw a few and missed before that. The whole first round he threw like 10. But no, that round. Right before he knocked him out, it wasn't like Valente shouldn't have seen it coming.

He was throwing a lot of hooks, but Valente was convinced he was going to steamroll. He was running forward hard and he ran right into it. Ran into it. I mean, it was the perfect right hook. It was picture perfect on the button. And that kid's strong. I mean, he hits fucking hard. Oh, yeah.

Belanti's a big boy. He's known as a wrestler. But no, Tom, too. Oh, Tom. Yeah. He's physically one of the strongest guys I've ever been on the mat with. Well, wrestlers are always strong. You grow up wrestling.

You grow up throwing bodies around and manipulating bodies. You develop a strength that's very unusual. Like Ben Askren. You look at that guy. He doesn't look strong. He looks like a regular guy. But you talk to people who roll with him, they're like, Jesus fucking Christ, is he strong.

Yeah, I read an interview with Pettis, and Pettis said he just tortures him on the mat. It's a different kind of strength. Different kind of strength. They've been throwing bodies around since they were four years old. And wrestling's grueling. I've gone to wrestling practices, like a D3 college program,

and they're grueling practices for an hour and a half, shoot across the mat for 20 minutes and drill. They just build functional muscle for years in that sport. I found a guy at Iowa who did his Ph.D. on the changes in wrestling rules over maybe a 50-year period or something. I read his thesis, and it was interesting. And you can see, they call them concession holds, not submissions, but it's the exact same thing.

You could see year by year, decade by decade, they took out every dangerous hold from wrestling. But curiously or interestingly, by taking out every dangerous hold, it actually made wrestling better. Because it's the one part of combat sports you can do as hard as you want and nothing gets broken. You can't do Muay Thai. You can't box 100% all the time. You sure can't put submissions and roll.

You can't do jiu-jitsu on people 100%. But by virtue of having taken all the concession holds out of wrestling, you can wrestle a guy just as hard as you want, and nobody has to go to the hospital. And I think that's what makes wrestling so phenomenal. Some of these guys start when they're 8 years old, and they go as hard as they humanly can for 20 years, and they're monsters. Also, the mental toughness that they develop.

There's a mental toughness that wrestlers possess, because also they're usually dehydrated. They're cutting weight. They're irritated, almost always overtrained, almost always. So you develop this ability to push through discomfort that a lot of people just don't have. You know, jiu-jitsu, you can go full blast, but you have to tap. And if guys don't tap, that's when problems occur. But you can certainly go full blast up until the moment when

you have to concede but you know a lot of people don't like to concede and that's where the problem comes in this is one of the dumbest things people don't mind if someone scores a point on them in basketball it seems normal but if somebody taps you it's like the end of your life because you're in a fight you would have lost but guess? That's the only fucking way you learn. You have to put yourself in positions where you're going to tap, and you've got to deal with that tap. And if you don't do it, you're never going to get good at it. And we've all known so many guys that come from kickboxing that for whatever reason, they got really good at one sport,

and they never could get good at jiu-jitsu because they didn't want to roll with people who could tap them. Hmm. Yeah, i was like that you know i i opened up an mma gym and way before i knew one single thing about the sport in 93 just a couple months after uh ufc won and for years and years and years i just didn't want to tap if some new guy came in if he was a blue belt that's when blue belts were kind of a big deal i would lose my mind at the fear that the guy might tap me. And then I read an interview with Frank Shamrock, and he goes, oh, I tap all the time. I was like, oh, oh, Frank Shamrock taps.

Oh, it's okay for me to tap. And that helped me a lot. You ever seen Marcelo Garcia and Damian Meyer roll? No. It's really interesting, really interesting, because they tap in left and right. Right, sure. They tap each other left and right. And they're not even going full clip.

They're sort of flowing. They're both so good. They're both such world champions. They don't have any ego on the line there. They're just trying to train hard and get their work in. Have you guys seen the clip of Haiyan and Henzo rolling? Yeah. It's my favorite rolling clip of all time on YouTube.

It's in their brothers, so there's got to be that sibling rivalry. And in the end, Henzo catches him. I was actually talking to Big John last night about the same thing. And he's like, because he has a gym up in Valencia, which is pretty close to here. And he's like, when a guy comes into my gym for the first time, they're a little starstruck, but they're close. They want to train jiu-jitsu. And he rolls with them, and he shakes hands, and they're going to start. And he taps them three times.

He's like, cool, you tap Big John. Now let's have some fun. So they kind of get over that. Oh, he lets them tap him. Yeah, he just taps them on the shoulder, like taps out and quits before they even start. So they have that in their head. All right, I just tapped Big John. Cool, now let's roll.

That doesn't even make sense. That's not real. Just to kind of break the pressure, I guess. That's stupid. It might be stupid, but it's just last night. You tapped Big John. Oh, be stupid, but it's just last night. Big John. Oh, Big John. How dare you.

I think after that, though, guys can't go after him. You know, you get some guys, a football player or something. Yeah, he's good. And he's strong as hell. Yeah. He's a giant man. Yeah. He is a big man.

He's not medium, John. And he's very good. He's not like this guy that, like, you say, oh, he trains jiu-jitsu. He trains. Like, he's really good. Were you guys in Vegas for UFC 189? I wasn't. My brother was actually in there.

I saw the photos you guys put on the UG, put some good photos. We did? Yeah. Where are you guys getting your photos from? When you have those photos on the front page where it says MMA news, I go click on it right now, there's a bunch of photos. Where are you getting those? Dolce exclusive on IV ban.

Where are you getting that photo? That's probably a screenshot from some video. Yeah, a screenshot from a video or Mike Dolce's Facebook. Oh, we did have a guy on the ground. We had a journalist out there for that. Oh, okay. We got some good interviews and stuff, but we weren't actually there, yeah.

He goes every now and then. He's an Irish guy. He's like, hey, I want to do some videos for you guys and go to shows and we're like we really can't afford that it's fucking expensive to send the guy out and put him up he's like no i just want to go i'll just do it on my own dime like cool go out there have fun we get credentialed so he that's all he wants from us really ufc 189 was probably one of the craziest events i've ever been to ever i believe it it. UFC 189, I wasn't there live. I saw it on a big flat screen, but it was one of those few times that I'm like,

ah, it was the Rory-Robbie fight where I looked at the screen at one point and Rory looked like he didn't have a nose. Like I'm looking on the high-def screen and there was no nose there. And it was one of the very few times I've I've just been like I'm not sure I want to watch this it was just too intense that was one of the most intense title fights ever Rory McDonald got I mean they got he got so close to winning that title he had Robbie Lawler almost knocked out. He head kicked him, dinged him. Robbie was wobbling and then Robbie came back to stop him in the next round and his

nose exploded and he literally went down in pain and you could see him writhing on the floor and it looked like he was just trying to find some comfort. Like the pain was so intense from that broken nose that he was just trying to find some kind of comfort.

Blood was everywhere and it was just trying to find some kind of comfort blood was everywhere and it was just two guys that pushed themselves to the brink and unfortunately when you see a fight what is that can you go to the bathroom is that what you're saying just ask all right go ahead go to the bathroom jesus christ you're your dad guy's drinking over here chris palmquist is the only one drinking here. Throwing down the booze. Checking his fucking Twitter every five minutes. But it was a sport, or it was a fight, rather, with these, like, you see him here, like, writhing in agony. Like, here.

Like, that is so hard to deal with. I mean, he's just looking at him. He's like, oh. He just goes down. I mean, he's just in agony. I mean, it's one of the most intense moments I've ever seen in a fight of just like the most obvious expression of pain. I mean, look at him here. It's crazy. He's never going to be the same.

He might not ever be the same. And by the way, Robbie too. That was a crazy fucking fight. Rory said the next day that was the greatest day of his life. Yeah, I'm sure he did. That's the man he is. Yeah. I mean, he fought his heart out.

There was nothing left for both of them. They were so closely matched. Such a good fight. And Robbie, how about when he's screaming in victory and his lip is split open like a cleft palate. His lip is split open, this giant gash in his lip. Like, look at him. There's a sideways photo where you see like a profile picture of him roaring with his lip split open. And it's just hard to believe that this guy fought like that.

He fought with his lips split wide open. There's a better picture of it, Jamie, if you find it. It's like a sideways angle of the side where you see the actual cut itself. But it was one of the most gruesome lip injuries I've ever seen. And it was the guy who won. Those guys, there it is. There it is. Dana apparently walked up from that side right there and said,

oh, my God, don't talk. Don't say a word. Yeah. I mean, his lip was literally just a giant slice. Like you got hit with a hatchet in the face. It was crazy. It was a crazy, crazy, crazy fight. And one of the most intense, closely matched title fights in the

welterweight division's history. Ever, probably, right? Yeah, ever. It was about down to the wire. I mean, it was really the kind of fight that everybody always wanted from GSP. But GSP's fights were always really tactical. He was really smart about when to take guys down. And people would get mad at, like, the way GSP would fight.

You know, they would say, oh, he's just outpointing these guys. But that's the only way you get out with your fucking head intact. Yeah, right. Not being fucked up for the rest of your life. This is what fighting is. I mean, what is fighting? Is fighting two guys hitting each other until one guy goes down? Or is fighting figuring out how to not get hit?

I mean, the smart guys figure out how to not get hit as much. You're always going to get hit. There's no way around it. But get hit the least amount possible. And I don't understand people that get mad at that. I really don't. I always want to say, has anybody ever hit you? Do you understand what these guys are trying to do?

They're trying to not get hit. It's a big part of this whole thing. Don't get hit. Giant part. My sense is, I never played football in my life, and I barely know the rules. When I watch football, I personally cannot appreciate their athleticism because I don't know what's going on. I know that NFL players are probably the best athletes in the whole world, but I can't see it because I don't know the sport.

My sense is there's a lot of MMA fans that just don't understand the artistry that goes on there, the timing it takes to take somebody down and all the nuances of defense. I think if they did know it, they would love watching. I love, GSP fighting is a fight clinic. Look at that guy for 30 seconds and I pick up something I didn't know before. I love watching the guy fight. But if I didn't know much about the sport, I'd be like, ah, just why don't you guys hit each other and give each other a bloody nose.

It's more exciting. Well, that's what a lot of people felt about the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fight. A lot of people were mad at that fight. Yeah, they called it boring. Like, hit him! Hit him! Like, you don't think he's trying? I mean, it's a fixed fight. They fucking made a decision to not hit each other. Oh my God. It's just that

stupid conversation that you have with people that don't understand the sport. And why doesn't he just do... Oh, gee, you shut the fuck up. Why doesn't he just, well, you should be coaching. It's the fan in the crowd. Punch him in the face. Like, that's good advice. No shit.

I'm trying to punch him in the face. I'm excited by the next level athletes and the next level ability that you're seeing in the sport that I think T.J. Dillshaw shows. Like, those kind of guys. that you're seeing in the sport that I think TJ Dillshaw shows, like those kind of guys. I think you're going to see a guy, like, eventually who can move and strike like TJ but kicks like Edson Barboza. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're going to see that with a guy who could wrestle like Johnny Hendricks.

You're going to see that with a guy who could submit guys like Damian Maia. Like, right now we're still in this growth stage. We haven't hit the critical mass yet. We haven't hit that one where we see the perfect Michael Jordan of MMA. They don't exist yet. I think you're starting to see glimpses of these possibilities. And what TJ showed this weekend, I think is a great glimpse of that possibility. And that's what excites me about fighting. Like people think, oh, you're a fucking meathead. You like watching people beat the shit out of each other. And it's like, I get it. I look like a meathead. You know,

I sound like a meathead. It's a, it's a crazy sport being a cage fighting commentator. It's, it's a crazy sport to be a part of. People would assume that you're like some sort of an uncivilized fuckhead. But my take on it is that we only live for a short amount of time anyway. You live and you die. And there are extreme, exciting things that you can do with your life if you so choose to. I think fighting is one of those things. And I think at the very highest level, what it is, is problem solving. It's intense consequence problem solving. And when you're looking at a guy like TJ Dillshaw, he has created this problem solving solution with Dwayne Ludwig.

And their problem-solving solution involves incredible athleticism, amazing determination, and a fanatical coach who has a deep, deep understanding of movement and striking in a way that I don't think any other coaches have. The way Dwayne teaches his guys is so different. I've worked out with him, man. He's on another level. He's all fucking As burgers out when he's when you're talking to him He gets crazy OCD a CD whatever the fuck it is. He buddies are Starts rattling out. I've watched him and TJ hit mitts together to watch him rattle out information

like the intensity level and the amount of data that they're crunching and processing and how much thought is behind every single movement. You know, a lot of guys, when they throw punches, like you say, you throw a one, two, you'll sort of move a little bit forward with the jab and then you rotate the shoulders and the hips to throw the right hand. Dwayne has the moving. He's got, you move with the left, you move with the right. You're constantly, and after you throw that right hand, you're moving again and you're throwing a left hook. You're moving again when you're throwing the right hand. You're not just rotating your shoulders.

You're stepping in or you're stepping back. There's all these movements. And when you see it in the Baral fight, especially that final flurry, I mean, that's some shit from a fucking movie, man. I mean, he's going left and right and left and right. He's not in front of him, Vitor Trey Telligman. You know, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. No, he's boom, boom,

sidestep, boom, boom, sidestep, boom, boom, sidestep, boom, boom. Matrix shit. And Burau's fucking seeing a fireworks display at Disneyland, and he's throwing these, his arms aren't working for him, and he's throwing these hooks just trying to stay alive and just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

He's just getting lit up like a Christmas tree. It was beautiful to watch. It's next level shit, you know? Yeah, I agree 100%. One of my heroes in the sport is Andre Paternaris. I think he's my hero, first of all, because he, as far as I understand it, he was the first guy to bring poor kids into jiu-jitsu and into mixed martial arts. It was a rich kid's sport.

And he would, I mean, look at all the top guys in his gym. They didn't have any money when they showed up there. They'd live on the mats there. And he played sort of an avocular or father role, and he brought them up. And then he sent himself to learn striking. He went to Holland. He learned Dutch kickboxing. And then he welded world-class jiu-jitsu with Dutch kickboxing.

Dutch kickboxing is like Western boxing, and plus Muay Thai kicks and some karate kicks, and then a bunch of combinations. In short, that's what it is. And he learned it. He put those two together, and he created guys like Barau and like Jose Aldo. But now there's another step, and it's that Bang Ludwig game. Yeah, the next level shit.

It really is an interesting thing to watch. It's an interesting thing to watch the progress. It's so fascinating because, again, if you look back at football from the 1960s, if you look back and you watch some of the great players that played throughout history, you will see better athletes today than you see then. But the game is recognizable. If you go back and watch UFC 1 from 1993, I mean, go back and watch a Marvin Hagler fight from 1988 or 1985.

Watch Hagler fight Mustafa Hamshu. That was a great fight. Greatshu or, you know. That was a great fight. Great fight. Watch him fight, you know, anybody. Watch him fight anybody from that era. And then watch a really good boxing match today, and you'll see the same thing.

You're seeing the same sport. Yeah, same sport. I mean, you might see a guy in Floyd Mayweather who has it down to a science. And I think personally, as far as boxing, I think Floyd Mayweather who has it down to a science. And I think personally, as far as boxing, I think Floyd Mayweather is the best boxer ever. Because I think he gets hit the least, he moves the best, and he shuts guys down the most. You don't have to like him as a person. You might think he's a douchebag

or whatever. But I think as far as being a skillful boxer, it's my personal opinion. I got in an argument with Max Kellerman who was telling me Sugar Ray Robinson is the best. I'm like, maybe. Do you think Jake LaMotta would beat Floyd Mayweather? I think you're fucking crazy if you believe that. I don't think Jake LaMotta would lay a glove on him. I just don't believe that would happen. I just don't see it happening. I mean, if they were the same weight class, I think Floyd Mayweather would fucking pot shot Jake LaMotta and tie him

up and cut angles on him and move away from him on the ropes. I just think he's better. I think Floyd Mayweather would fucking pot shot Jake LaMotta and tie him up and cut angles on him and move away from him on the ropes. I just think he's better. I think, yeah, Ray Robinson might have fought more times or fought more people and went all the way up to light heavyweight and all that jazz. But I think Floyd's the best. But when you look at Ray Robinson's fights, it's recognizable. It's the same sport. It's the same sport. It's the same sport. There's a little bit of a difference, a little more plotting.

They fought a little different. They stood in the pocket a little bit more. But Jesus Christ, you look at the difference between MMA from 93. Shit, go to 95. Look at MMA from 20 years ago. And look at it now. It's not the same thing at all. You watch TJ Dillashaw's fight the other night,

and tell me there was anybody that was even remotely similar to that just 10 years ago. Forget about 20. Too true. It's amazing. I was talking with my—I'm the records keeper for MMA, and my counterpart, the records keeper for boxing, is Andy Miramontes. A couple of—two, three years ago, I was talking with Andy and John McCarthy, and McCarthy was talking about the fact that he owns a gym and he rolls with all the athletes and stuff.

And Annie Miramonti's got kind of a weird look in his face. And he goes, wait a minute, you roll with these people? Because in boxing, you have to keep a distance, a separation between the officials and the athletes. And what McCarthy said is this sport is evolving all the time, and I can't do my job unless I'm in there actually rolling with the people. And then he showed him a go-go platter. And Annie, the boxing guy, was like,

oh, that's unbelievable. And several years ago, the go-go platter was a fairly new move, and he just threw that out as an example of how boxing basically stays the same. So if you're a records keeper or you're a referee, you are refereeing and officiating a sport that's been the same for 50 years, basically. You don't have to know all the new things in it. And MMA is just changing all the time.

And if you're an official involved in the sport, you've got to be on the mats every week or something's going to be coming up that you've never seen before. Yeah, in jiu-jitsu, there's always some new move that someone figures out. There's always something, some new way to do a choke, some new way to lock an armbar in or attack a leg. That combination that Jamie just put up on the big screen, this is TJ's final flurry against Hennon Barau. You show me a painting that anybody ever made that looks better than this. Look at the way he just did that, the way he's moving on him. And look, every time he's punching, he stands in front of him, he lands shots, and then he moves.

Boom, moves to the left, moving to the right. Look, every time he's throwing these punches, he's moving. I mean, this is like a sponge, next-level athlete, and a kid like T.J. Dillshaw, super dedicated, got a perfect mind for the sport, that became best friends with a fucking maniac like Dwayne Ludwig, who's a world champion kickboxer, who showed him how to do it. And it's exactly how they did it in the locker room.

I was actually back there watching them warm up, and that's exactly how they did it in the locker room like I was actually back there watching them warm up And that's exactly how they move warm up and he executes it exactly look at that Bang wants him to look at that that animated gif like look at this movement. I mean, it's fucking incredible I Mean look at that that is insane and right in front of them being and then slides just out of the way of the Counter-strikes. This is incredible shit, man. I mean, I don't think there's been a guy in the sport that moves that good. And what's really incredible is Dwayne never moved like that.

Dwayne's teaching him some shit that he figured out that he didn't even do himself. I mean, Dwayne was a great kickboxer, but Dwayne was way more linear in his movements. Like, what TJ's doing is some really crazy shit that Dwayne sort of figured out that TJ can do. And maybe the craziest thing about it is TJ does have a base in something else. He started off, obviously, as a wrestler. There's a whole new generation coming up that were on the swim team where they played hockey or something. They don't have any base in any sort of a thing. All they're learning from the get-go is mixed martial arts.

Guys like Joe Proctor at a Christmas gym. He was a hockey player in high school and walked into the gym and never done any kind of combat sport all his life. And I think with the whole next generation of Joe Proctors is going to throw up stuff I can barely imagine. Well, there's a school of thought that the best way is actually not that way, but rather the best way is to get really fucking good at one thing. To get, like, really good at kickboxing.

And then dedicate yourself to learning MMA. So you will always have this advantage in the striking. Because we all know that to get really incredibly good at something almost requires, like, a singular dedication. Like, although TJ is one of the world's best mixed martial arts fighters, for sure, is really incredibly good at something almost requires like a singular dedication like like although tj is one of the world's best mixed martial arts fighters for sure he's probably not one of the world's best strikers if you put him in like glory and you put him up against like one of the you know andy ristie or one of those like really high level muay thai guys he might not be able to beat those guys but when it comes to putting all that shit together, he's one of the best at it.

But if you get a guy like Andy Ristie who learns all the shit that he's doing, that TJ's learning, then he will have an advantage over TJ, at least in that one aspect of the game. Whereas TJ will always have an advantage over him in wrestling, because that's his base. There's an interesting schools of thought there

that some people think that it's best to learn everything from the get-go, like a Rory McDonald. Yeah. And some people think it's better to be like a Damien Maia. You come in, you have this one insane discipline, the world-class Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and then everything else you got to kind of learn to go with it. But worst case scenario, you could always take it to that place, and you'll have this giant advantage over everyone else. Do you remember when Damien Maia took Rick Story down? Rick Story is this fucking beast of a wrestler.

Super strong guy, but Damian Maia took him down, smushed him, transitioned to his back, and squozed his fucking head like a zit. And I remember watching it going, holy shit. I never saw anybody do that to Rick Story before. But it's that next level jiu-jitsu that he has that no one else has, or that very few people have. I've watched that tape. I don't know how he did it.

He did the same thing to Ed Herman. Ed Herman was a Team Quest guy, good wrestler, and he's like taking them down, mounting them, triangle them, right? Mounted a triangle and finished them like this. It was like when Damian Maia went on that three-fight submission streak where he just ran through guys. What about Chael Sonnen? Remember remember we lateral dropped him yeah lateral dropped him went right into a mounted triangle and tapped him it's like what the fuck and then just to take

chael down like that too to fucking throw him like a rag doll it was crazy he's a next level grappler but you know when he fought anderson like good. You couldn't even catch him. But Anderson, that was a crazy fight. That was the one in Abu Dhabi where Anderson came out guns blazing for, like, the first two rounds and then just took off. Just died, yeah. Just stopped fighting for the last three. As I understand it, that was a class warfare thing. The play, you kept taunting him and calling him playboy. And I asked a Brazilian, why do you call him a playboy?

It's kind of a compliment to call somebody a playboy, I think, in the States. And he said, eh, it means kind of like a rich kid who's not too serious. And, you know, obviously Anderson Silva was raised by his uncle. His uncle was a cop, and his parents didn't have any money at all. Didn't have the money to raise their own son. Gave him to the

cop. And even the cop, I don't think, had a whole ton of money. So he came up poor. And I think that's where all the shoot-day-box guys came from was poor neighborhoods, and so there was some rivalry there, and I think that's what was going on is he knew he could beat him up, but just wanted to rough up the rich kid, the preppy kid. It was crazy, but it was real weird to watch because it didn't make any sense because Damian Maia was never really a shit-talker. He's a gentleman.

So to see Anderson screaming at him and then not fighting for the last three rounds, that whole arena, they were so pissed because this was a huge event in Abu Dhabi, and it was right after Sheikh Taqnoon had bought 10% of the UFC. It was kind of embarrassing for them to have that event there and have the greatest fighter in the world at the time, Anderson, fight this guy in Damian Maia who's well-respected and people thinking this was going to be some sort of a crazy war, and then Anderson just doesn't fight for the last three rounds.

He just moved around. I remember afterwards Dana White said, if he does that again, I'm going to fire him. I was like, oh, my God, sweet Jesus, he's the greatest fighter in the world, and that fight was so bad, you're going to fire him? Isn't that crazy? That's crazy talk. You know, how do you do that? You can't really fire somebody for winning.

For winning, no. You know, I mean, you won. But do that and lose? Watch out. Well, Anderson is a crazy, crazy sort of special example of a guy who had this aura of invincibility everybody thought he was just indestructible until he met Weidman and Weidman just smashed him and then all of a sudden he's not the same guy anymore like you see him in the Nick Diaz fight when Nick Diaz fell to the ground and like put his hands up like he was sleeping because he was bored with him he's taunting him

and you could see Anderson was fucking with his head to the point where after the fight was over, Anderson fell to the ground and was crying after he beat Nick Diaz. I mean, he's weeping, openly weeping. I was standing over him while I was doing it. He was openly weeping just because it was so much pressure to get through it because of those two fights with Weidman. Like, Weidman stole something from him. You know, he just beat him when he knocked him out and then the second fight when he broke his leg. Well't just beat him he like stole all of his confidence he stole

who he was as a champion those moments are crazy because before that when he fought stephen bonner in brazil and put his back up against the cage he's like come on try to hit me and they just moved out of the way and then blasted him with the knee to the body and took him out and then jumped up on the cage and all the Brazilians went crazy I was like who's better than that guy who the fuck is gonna beat that guy Meanwhile Chris Wyvern was watching the whole thing at home not impressed For crazy, it's it's crazy how that happens how we get this idea in our head whether it's a Mike Tyson or an Anderson Silva Or anybody we get this idea in our head that they could never be beat

And it's one of the great things about any sport, especially fighting, is that you know there's going to come a day. Sometimes you're the hammer and sometimes you're the nail. There's going to come a day when you're the nail, bitch. You know, you better get ready for it or you better get out like George St. Pierre did. And he's been the nail, you know. He's been the nail with Matt Serra.

It's going to happen. did right and he's even he's been the nail you know he's been the nail with matt sarah it's gonna happen the the mental game i think is is way under way way way underappreciated and it hit me when i was a kid i learned that sir roger banister the first man to break the four minute mile um everybody thought you couldn't break the four minute mile and he finally did it and once he did it within like 60 days four other guys did it Because they knew it could be done. Right. And then when you have an idea in your head in sports, but particularly in combat sports, whether it's I'm invincible or I'm going to beat this guy or whatever, when you have that idea in your head, it's actually physically, physiologically really, really powerful.

But that got taken away from Anderson Silva. He realized he was not, in fact, invincible. And then I think life's a lot tougher for him now. Oh, he was not, in fact, invincible. And then, I think life's a lot tougher for him now. Oh, it's way tougher. Still my hero. I think that's why a guy like McGregor right now, he literally thinks he's invincible. And it's that power of his mentality that

pushes, he literally thinks he can't lose. He can call his fights, call the round, and he does it because he's so confident. It's not only that he believes it, he knows it in his own head, and it's powerful. It carries him through just destroying these guys. Chad Mendes is a good fighter.

Chad Mendes is way out of shape for that fight. Let's be honest about things. First of all, Chad Mendes and Uriah stated this, and Dwayne Ludwig said the same thing when I talked to him. Chad takes time off in between fights. He likes to go hunting. He likes to spend time doing other shit. And for him to accept a fight like that on two weeks notice,

he did it because he thought he was going to be able to win anyway. But if you gave Chad Mendes a full camp, if you gave Chad Mendes six to eight weeks and really let him know, three months preferable, it would be a different fight. It would be a very different fight. As long as he wasn't injured, and Conor actually was injured going into that fight.

He had something wrong with his knee. He was getting stem cell injections in his knee. Yeah, I heard that like eight weeks very different fight. As long as he wasn't injured and, you know, Conor actually was injured going into that fight. He had something wrong with his knee. He was getting stem cell injections in his knee. Yeah, I heard that like eight weeks before the fight. Yeah, Chris told me that a couple months before. A lot of people knew about that. Bookies were talking about it. But Chad just didn't have the wind. It was really obvious.

It was also obvious he wasn't prepared for that kind of fucking movement. I mean, it takes a long time to get ready for a guy who can kick like Conor can. You know, and Conor's long and big for For 145, he fucking sucks a lot of weight. I don't know what the number is, but I know that when he was there on weigh-in day, he looked like Skeletor. Yeah. I mean, he looked like total starvation.

And then the next day, he looked big again. You know, he probably put on... I wouldn't be shocked if he was 170 in the cage, 25 pounds. He walks around at 170. I wouldn't be surprised if he was 170 in the cage, 25 pounds. He walks around at 170. I wouldn't be surprised if he was that big in the cage. I've known guys that have cut that much weight and put it all right back on. So crazy. Even the guys that don't cut a lot, the 55ers, they're still 68, 69.

They don't even have hard cuts. What about Gleison Tebow? He's like 190 in the cage. He's gigantic. He fights at 155, and he's fucking huge. I mean, he is a goddamn superhero. He doesn't even look like a real person when he gets in that cage. He's just so muscular and thick, and it doesn't make any sense.

I actually have no idea how he does it. It's too much. And he competes, though. Oh, yeah. He doesn't like gas because of it. He has a gas tank on. Usually there's guys that get sucked down a lot. They got the good round in them and they kind of tire.

But T-Bow can fight three fives no problem being that gigantic after a huge weight cut. Yeah, well, biodiversity is a real thing. Some people just have abilities that other people just don't have. Like Cain Velasquez has always had this incredible ability to have this phenomenal cardio, you know, which was so ironic. Here's another example of a guy you think is invincible. And then Fabrizio Verdum literally out cardioed Cain by training really hard and doing a lot of cardio at 8000 feet above elevation above sea level. And Cain just thought, hey, I got the best cardio in the sport. I don't even need to go to Mexico early.

So they're fighting in Mexico City as heavyweights at 7,500 feet above sea level. Super high altitude. Ridiculous for heavyweights. And Fabrizio had been training 1,000 feet above that. He really prepared. He really got ready for it. And you see Cain gassing. And you see Cain gassing in that second round.

I was like, I don't even fucking believe what I'm seeing. Cain Velasquez is exhausted he's going back to his corner on rubbery legs he's taking these big heaving deep breaths I'm like I've never seen this from him before the UFC had one of their I don't know if it was an embedded there was some kind of a little video that they shot

of Verdum in his camp and I saw he was sleeping on the floor. They showed he had four fighters in the room, and he just had a tiny little, it wasn't even a cot, he just had a pallet on the floor, and I looked at that,

I looked at the elevation, and I was like, this guy's going to win. He's sleeping on the floor for two months at a time. He's at elevation. He's going to win this fight. You could sleep on the floor all day long,

and Chris Wibnall still punch your fucking face in. He'll have a nice comfy bed, wake up with his little fucking footie pajamas on and beat the shit out of you. I don't know if that helps. We were just talking about Weidman. We were trying to figure out exactly why he's so dominant. And we don't have any genius answers to that. His brother beat him up. His brother beat him up all his life.

His brother brutalized him. His dad's an NFL player. His brother was an animal and his brother bullied him. And I think when you grow up like that, you're constantly defending yourself against your brother. I think that's one of the reasons why Matt Hughes was so dominant. Him and his brother used to beat the fuck out of each other. I think that's one of the reasons why John Jones is such a badass. Him and his brothers are all super athletes and they beat the fuck out of each other. I think that is super normal. I think when you develop in a household where you're constantly competing with your own brother,

and in Weidman's case, his brother was older than him. His brother was older and bigger. And there's only bad stories that came out of that, too. He had to go to the hospital once. I think his brother dropped a weight plate on his head. I don't know if that's a true story, but that's what I heard. I'll leave that in a second. My brother and I have caused bloody wounds more than once growing up.

But he still ended up a pussy. I don't understand. He got beat up his whole life. He's right here and he doesn't have a mic. This is so fucked up. It's so rough. Well, I just think that there's an advantage in that. A psychological advantage in not being afraid because you're constantly going to war with your own brother.

You just develop a steel-hardened sense of competition where you're constantly going to war with your own brother. You know, you just develop a steel hardened sense of competition where you're just ready to go. You're ready to go. I'm ready to go right now, motherfucker. You're ready to go. You know, like you have this, like when Chris Weidman got in Anderson Silva's face when they first waited and Anderson Silva walked up to him and kissed him, like he pressed his face and Weidman didn't move.

And Anderson's staring at him and say we'll see you tomorrow he goes hey i'm not afraid of you motherfucker that's what he said he goes i'm not afraid of you and you could see in his eyes like it wasn't like i'm not afraid of you man like there's no craziness it was just a real calm i'm not afraid of you man i'm not afraid of you and weidman was like tomorrow we will see we will see yeah but looking even there you see how goddamn big weidman is yeah he's big and this is when he weighed in at 185 you know the amount of weight that that guy cuts i don't know how much it is but it's not a small amount it's it's multiple pounds because when he fought damian maya that was a fight that he had to take on fox on very short

notice and he sucked a tremendous amount of weight to fight that fight and he had to take on Fox on very short notice, and he sucked a tremendous amount of weight to fight that fight. And he was just absolutely drained and exhausted because of it. Even when they put the water back on him, one of the things that Ray Longo said in between the corner, he said, I saw what you did yesterday to make weight. If you did that, you could fucking do anything. Go out there and kick his ass. Like, he had to say that to Weidman when Weidman was exhausted.

there and kick his ass like he had to say that to Weidman when Weidman was exhausted so I didn't realize how strong Weidman was until he did that helicopter knee bar on Anderson Silva and that blew my mind as much as anything I've ever seen in a fight Lorenzo Fertitta talks about how the whole sport is based on holy fucking shit moments he's every single UFC at some point something's gonna happen that makes you go holy fucking shit and that's the heart of the sport for me it was when he did that helicopter knee bar on anderson silver i'm like really you're trying to knee bar him and he you know got kind of close that's when i realized this mentally is just at a another level wasn't scared of taking him down i knew he could take him down well what got me was the vitor fight when he shot on vitor that was such a deep fight. When he shot on Vitor, that was such a deep double. And when he shot on him and clasped his hands together, I'm like,

this is, no one's defending this. He's not defending this. And then once he got Vitor to the ground, the difference between, first of all, the difference between Vitor, the Vitor that fought Rockhold, and the Vitor that fought Bisping, I mean, he's just not the same dude. You take away the TRT, no testosterone

injections, and he's just this fucking regular guy he actually has had a deficit because his body has really low testosterone as opposed to a normal 36 37 year old man his body i mean he's been taking that shit for so long i mean if you go back to the randy couture fight like we were talking about before, he was 240 pounds. He's been messing with his system and hyper human levels for so long that his regular endocrine system is probably really fucked up. That's also the fight where Weidman

got in his face at the weigh-ins and he was yelling at him about the levels that he showed in camp because his levels in camp were three times higher than Weidman's. The level that they tested him on. But acceptable, right? It's acceptable. It was under the

limit, but it was 1,200. And this is a guy that needed testosterone replacement? Something wasn't right. And Weidman was like, you're fucking juicing. You're fucking juicing. He goes, I know you're fucking juicing the camp. And he goes, I'm going to make you pay for it. I'm going to punish you for this tomorrow. And you could see

Vitor's eyes were like, oh. And he said something to him. I couldn't hear what he said to it. I'm going to punish you for this tomorrow. And you could see Vitor's eyes were like, oh. And he said something to him. I couldn't hear what he said to him. So I asked Weidman what he said. And he just was going off about the levels. He goes, I knew something was wrong with his levels. He goes, I'm busting my ass. I'm 10 years younger than him.

And I'm testing at 300. And that's what happens to guys in camp. They break down. I mean, you're going through these two and three days, and you're just goddamn exhausted. You're just trying to push through it, trying to push through it just to keep your conditioning high. And when he found out that Vitor was level, he was so angry.

He was so fucking angry. And then he did punish him for it. When he got him down, he beat him up bad. He beat him up bad. That was a bad beatdown. I never saw Vitor in that sort of a position either mounted like that with just no hope of getting up yeah wanting to be out of there yeah there it is so hopeless he was punching up which we know doesn't work nobody does i mean

it never works it worked in like he was just flailing like he was trying to hit him back and why it was just smashing him just boom boom and boom, boom. And look at his face. He's just so like... See if you can get a video, Jamie, of the final flurry. It's awful. But it's also like Vitor's body when he got into the cage, like all this loose skin.

It was weird. It was weird to see. It's like he looked like a welterweight. Like he could be welterweight, like easy. If he could stay off the shit, he could be a 170. And not a big one you compare him to like brandon thatch like thatch is a big welterweight or like anthony johnson when

he made welterweight holy shit that didn't even make sense he made it once i think for sure made it three or four times a couple times he missed it and now he has to cut weight to get light heavyweight chris and i were at mask's funeral, and that was the first time I'd met him in person. And it's one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen. If you were at Mask's funeral, I was there too. So we saw each other. You remember that fucking blowhard speech that the director went up and gave that Mask died on a certain day so that he could promote the movie?

Do you remember that shit? I do remember that guy, and I heard he barely even knew him that barely not they were not best friends or I just assumed was a best friend and he was distraught and that's why he was being a Blow hard the guy shouldn't even been able to talk at the funeral. I mean, that's how little he know him and he went up and gave this unbelievably ridiculous Hollywood speech of mask dying at a start. I was wondering, why did he die at this time? And then I realized he died so that he could promote our movie, which is coming out June 20th.

Hollywood. It was so gross. It's Hollywood. It was gross. It was so gross. You heard it all throughout the the the room like all these people going oh fucking christ but it was one of those things where no one could say anything because you're trying to be respectful because it's at you know this funeral and then like dan

um punk ass went up and told like a real heartfelt thing and you could sell like that was his really good friend and a brother and he was they were just he was really broken up and like you know and Tim went up and he was really broken up and this guy goes up and gave this fucking disgusting speech. How disgusting? I mean like on a 1 to 10 it was a 10 right? It was always a 10. Oh yeah that was that was perfectly disgusting

and I just assumed that he was being so inappropriate because he was broken up inside and I asked a couple people, and they were barely. They were acquaintances. He's just a fraud. Just one of those Hollywood frauds. Who were the two guys that tried to fight at the dinner afterwards?

Like, two guys that were in the UFC. Maybe I won't names, but two guys in the UFC. We were at the dinner, but it's still like a somber experience. You know, we just came from the funeral. And two guys in the UFC almost got into a fight at dinner, like yelling and screaming at each other. And someone just said that, like, guys, shut the fuck down. You're at a memorial dinner. Like, relax.

Jesus. It's so crazy. Some people can't let it go. There's no safe place. I'm pretty sure they never fought to this day, though, because I think they're in different weight classes now. Here's the final thing with Vitor and Weidman Vitor is trying to hit him Vitor had him hurt he hit him with a couple good shots and Chris stayed right in front of him and took the shot and

Then once he got him down He just started smashing him moved in the full mount and just beat the fuck out of him here We go boom boom boom boom mashing him, moved into full mount, and just beat the fuck out of him. Here we go. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Just brutalized him. It's an old, old, old, old line where you talk about punch a black belt once and he's a brown belt and so on. And Vitor just got punched into being a white belt.

Well, I don't know how good Vitor's just straight ground game is. I've never seen him roll jiu-jitsu with a high-level guy. I've never seen it. I saw him almost catch. He almost caught John Jones with an armbar, but John kind of wasn't respecting his ground game. He's just kind of leaving it out there. It wasn't like a difficult armbar to catch.

I mean, any purple belt who's worth his salt could have got that same kind of arm bar if a guy's doing that with his arm. But I would love to see, you know, you hear about guys like, this guy's a black belt, that guy's a black belt. What level are they really, like in a real jiu-jitsu sense? It used to be like 10 years ago, you heard black belt, you're like, this guy's got to be amazing. And now you hear black belt, you're like, this guy's got to be amazing. And now you hear black belt. Well, what kind of black belt? Because there are black belts and there are black belts. Yeah.

There's the Marcelo Garcia's of the world. Sure. Fucking Jesus. The Jean Jacques of the world. There's black belts that just chew up other black belts. And then there's black belts that tap other black belts. Comprido got tapped by Hodger Gracie at the UFC event, you know, when they have the grappling thing.

Yeah, the expo. But look, Comprido is obviously like super high level black belt, but Hodger Gracie is another level. That's another level. And like, it's hard to explain that to people when they say like, well, this guy's a black belt and that guy's a black belt. Well, here's the deal. And it's hard to explain that to people when they say, well, this guy's a black belt and that guy's a black belt.

Well, here's the deal. That guy could do anything he wants to me, but that guy could do anything he wants to him. There's levels. There's levels to this shit. There's definitely levels. And it's hard to wrap your head. You can't really quantify it as black or purple or red. At a certain point in time, it's just a matter of, well, that's Hodger Gracie. And that's just all there is to it.

Because I've rolled with black belts, and I'm, like, pretty competitive. And then I've rolled with the higher-end guys, and I feel like I never learned jiu-jitsu. Roll with Eddie tonight. I've rolled with Eddie before. Wonderful time. Yeah, I'll roll with him. I can't wait to get fucking tortured by him. I've rolled with Eddie before a couple times out here.

Wonderful time getting tied up in a fucking night. He's actually the one that fucked all my ears up. Eddie? Eddie's completely responsible for my ears. All the one that fucked all my ears up. It is completely responsible for my ears. All the cauliflower. No. 100%.

No. I didn't have cauliflower for seven years. I had a fight. Because his high guard is so tight. I had a fight and I got hit a couple times

so my ears were sore. I came to LA for like a month. I trained with Eddie a lot. And the first night he just put me in his rubber guard and just shins rubbing across my ears

for like four hours And I left and they were fucking like that. They were like don't go here. Why didn't you drain them? I so I I didn't know about draining them back then this was like I had no idea I'm like how did you not know about draining? I was like they were doing that in the 50s. I don't know I could have a wrestle though. There's a Roman Statue have you seen the statue of a gladiator with cauliflower ear that's leaking it's got a cut on the cauliflower ear and there's drops coming out of the ear so i have like ears like this and the next night i go to big john's gym and he looks at

me he goes holy fuck your ears are big and he's like you want me to drain them i'm like i don't know what that means he's like come with me and And he takes me into the back and gets me out and drains my ears. And they go down, but I never got them cut out and stitched. So they're just fucking big now. Well, they could fix that, too. My friend Brent had his ears cut open. They fillet them like a salmon. And they get in there and they scrape out all the cartilage.

I had that shit in my nose. Yeah. Well, I always wear ear guards shit in my nose. Oh. Yeah. Well, I always wear ear guards, so my ears are okay. I have a little bit of cauliflower in a few spots, but most of it is fine. But my nose had been broken so many times that what cauliflower ear is, is when your skin breaks and it fills up with blood, the blood remains in the skin and then it calcifies. So when the blood is trapped under the surface of the skin it bulges up and like that little hematoma or whatever you would call it that blood becomes hard it calcifies and literally

becomes like a stone in your body that's why cauliflower ears are hard as a rock right as they are a rock yeah it's a calcium rock so what they can do is they cut you open and then they scrape that stuff out and then they stitch you back up there's the roman um statue i think it's roman it might be greek is it roman or greek says roman see that those cuts and it's leaking i mean that's crazy cauliflower ear they had it back then that well not only did they have cauliflower ear back then but a uh uh an md in new york saw this and he believes he's pretty confident that that's actually draining an ear. It wasn't just the guy got hit in the ear,

he had a cauliflower, and he was bleeding. He believes that that's a medical procedure. Wow. And that they were cutting and draining the ear on purpose in 1100 B.C. or whenever it was. That's crazy, because it makes sense if you, I mean, you don't really see slices like that. Right, right. Too much, and the way it's leaking and bleeding, I mean, you don't really see slices like that. Right, right.

Too much. I use mine as a weapon now. Like when I'm grappling, I grind it into someone's head and pull the other side. Because it's as hard as a rock, like you said. Yeah, look at that picture of the guy when you scroll down. That's on my website. His hand's wrapped up. I blogged about that a couple of years ago.

Oh, really? Yeah, that's the UG. Wow, that's crazy. One of my favorite cauliflower ear stories is I shot a Box for MMA DVD with Joe Lozon and his brother Danny and their boxing trainer. And Danny comes in late, and he's like, I can't shoot this. Look at my ear. And his ear was all huge. And Joe's like, oh, I can fix this.

So they get a needle, and they go in the bathroom. And Joe jams a needle in and Danny starts screaming and they're basically in a fistfight with each other with a needle through the ear and somebody looks in and he goes dude that needle is going all the way through the ear so that the needle didn't stop in the middle to drain the fluid out and it's cured all the way through Danny's ear and the two of them are wrestling around each other it is on video well there's another example two brothers who beat the fuck out with each other and screaming at each other. That's on video somewhere. It is on video somewhere. Yeah, we have it on video. Well, there's another example.

Two brothers who beat the fuck out of each other. Oh, my God. And they both became very tough. There's a bunch. You ever see the video of them fighting on the front lawn at their house? Oh, and they were fighting. It was like NHB headbutts. But Joe used to always get the better of it, right?

Yeah, he was always the big brother. He started training first. That's the problem. But Danny's good, man. He just doesn't have that same drive that Joe has, like the mental side. Danny is incredible. He's the guy that leaves the gym for four months, comes in, and

beats up everybody. But he doesn't have that, like, whatever it is. To stay in shape. To stay in shape, to stay motivated, to stay in the gym. Is he still fighting? I know he fought in World Series of Fight recently. Yeah, he's fighting August 16th for a local show up down in Rhode Island. Is he in shape?

Does he train hard now? Yeah, he's training now pretty well. With you guys? Yeah. And he trained at a couple of local gyms. There they are. Yeah. This is before the UFC, 2002 maybe.

Oh, my God. Yeah, this is a fight. They fight twice because Joe wins and then Danny wants to fight again. Oh, my God. Look at this. Did he win by armbar here? I think he does it fit. Oh, I don't remember it specifically It's so crazy these brothers just and this is all family on the front lawn watching It's so crazy like the pig and they're fighting. Yeah, I mean they are fucking fighting

Yeah, this is a tight ass triangle Z tap here tap here yeah but then he pushes him and they fight again there it is that's literally like a salt shore community family street like the neighbors are there like the cousins are there you guys had a pig roast too right yeah well his uh his parents for years had a pig roast every summer so that that's where we were. There's like a hundred people there, and I don't know how it even started. It's just, hey, like, fuck you. No, fuck you. Fuck you.

And then they put shorts on, and a cup, and gloves, and the whole deal. I'll tell you the funniest. Danny, since he was 18, has never worn jeans without sprawl shorts underneath them for his entire adult life. He's always ready to go. So he just takes his pants off and can fight? Yeah.

You know, he wears his pants loose. He's got big jeans. He's just ready to go. Have you seen these pants called, they call them barbell shorts? No. They're not shorts. Barbell jeans, barbell brand jeans. Look at that.

I'm wearing them right now. These guys sent them to me. They're jeans, but they're stretchy. Oh, shit. Dude, they're incredible. I think I need some of those. It really is straight. Look at this. Jesus. They don't hold but they're stretchy. Oh, shit. Dude, they're incredible. I think I need some of those. It really is stretch. Look at this.

Jesus. They don't hold you back at all. They don't bind up at all. Like, you could throw full power kicks at these things. Can you work out in it? Can you squat? Yeah, you could do anything. Look, there's no worry about the way your legs move.

I'm going to have to Google those things. It's like having tights on. Barbell jeans? Yeah, I have no... They're called... Yeah, this is a company. I have no affiliation with them. They just sent me a pair of these, and I fucking love them. They're amazing.

They make shorts now, too. So they have MMA shorts out of the same material. But the jeans look and feel like jeans, except in the way you move. There's just some sort of elastic quality to the pants. And this is a new company. There's just some sort of elastic quality to them to the pants and this is a new company There I've bought some before from some other companies that make them like for hockey players and stuff Because I don't fit in regular pants because I have a fucking troll body my I have a third really my I wear 32 But I have to wear a belt

I really have a 30 inch waist but I have big have big-ass thighs. And so I have to, like a lot of times I wear 33-inch pants, straight leg, just so I can get them past my mid-thigh. Because otherwise I can't, like Levi's 501s are a joke. I can't even wear them. I literally can't get them on. Like they get to right here and they just lock up. But these barbell pants, they just fit like a glove. And look at that.

Look at how they stretch. They snap. We were talking about how technology improves things. This is embarrassing, but I remember in the 80s, I bought Chuck Norris kicking jeans. I had those! They had ties in the front and a pleated crotch, and the advertisement was,

the secret, it's in the crotch. Somehow I found that compelling. And Chuck Norris always threw kicks with his fucking cowboy boots on. That's right. He always had those cowboy boots on with the heel, the wooden heel. Look at him. There he is. He's the fucking best. Awesome. 1995, that's what I paid.

Well, they had a gusset. And then there's another brand called Diamond Gusset Jeans. And I used to buy those a lot, too. And what they were was like a regular pair of jeans, but they put a gusset and a crotch so that you can move around better. But none of those can fuck. Don't bind your legs. Don't bind your legs.

But none of those can fuck with the barbell jeans. Barbell jeans, they nailed it. They know what the fuck they're doing. But those tie in the front, that's bullshit. That's how those, they used to have those karate, PK karate pants. I used to wear those with my taekwondo gi. My taekwondo, the dobok. I used to wear those different pants, the century pants that tied up in the front.

Because they kick better. They were better. They were looser. They were better. They're a great sir They were looser on your body They figured out a way to make him less binding like even Muay Thai shorts man a lot of Muay Thai shorts fucking bind on you I see a lot. Mm-hmm. See that and like Alan Belcher used to fight. They'd be all rolled up Oh, yeah, they pulled them up because Alan has those giant trunk legs, you know And a lot of those pants they bind out.

Like Melvin Manhoff, he would wear like a gladiator skirt, you know, because his legs are huge. I wonder if it is a Western body kind of a thing because I've never really seen a Thai guy with huge, huge, huge thighs. Yeah. Maybe they're designed for more slight 145 to 105 pound Thai fighters. Definitely. I mean, why would they design them for people that don't even wear them in their world at least but the um the thing about like guys who weight lift if you lift weights and you develop that big ass fucking football player

thighs or something like that your regular pants just not gonna fit you i'm always amazed when i wear xl i'm like i'm fucking five 5'8". What about a real XL person? What the hell do they wear? How am I in XL? What the fuck does a guy like Big John wear or Stefan Struve? I mean, how many X's is in his fucking clothes? They must be custom made. I mean, how many guys are Stefan Struve's?

And Big John is 250 or something? 240? He would love you if you said he was 250. I heard Don't talk about his weight, though, recently. Don't ask him about it. Don't ask him? Well, if you go back to UFC 1, and you look at him then, you look at him now. Finger chain.

Hmm. Something about the diet. Hmm. Yeah. I don't think he's 240. I think he's quite a bit bigger than that. But point being, he's a real XL dude. That's a real...

I'm not fucking XL. So why do they do that? Who the hell's small? Who the hell is wearing a small? Women. You have to be really fucking... I can't get in a small. What are you looking at?

You're looking at me for a size. It's bizarre. It's bizarre the sizing, you know, that people have. I think in the future, we're going to get all of our clothes from 3d printers that's what i think just printed to fit yeah i really do yeah they're they're doing all kinds of crazy shit with 3d printers now i think that's probably the future of pretty much everything yeah making firearms already that's the firearms or something that gets subject to a lot more stress than than clothing does i mean if you can make, pretty soon they'll be able to make clothing on demand.

I think that's what you're going to get, like everything. If you want to buy a computer, what you're going to do is you're going to, you know, it's like buying a license for your computer from somewhere. You're going to get a license for it, and then you're just going to like, you know, like a one-click on Apple or something like that. And then you're just going to print up your computer. I really think that. I think you're just going to have like a printer, but that printer is going to have raw materials like metals and minerals or whatever you need for batteries or what have you and you're just going to print it. Have you invested in any of that?

No. This is one of the most, LA is one of the most creative areas in the world. It's more Silicon Valley. That's where all the computer stuff is going down. You must have opportunities, though. People must approach you with all kinds of stuff. Because you're a forward-thinking guy. I'm not investing in anything.

I don't have time to do what I'm already doing. I'm trying to size down. I'm trying to do less shit. The last thing I want to do. Is this guy making a t-shirt here, Jamie? Is that what this is? Look at this. Oh, so they're already doing it.

They're already ready. Every time, this is my problem. Whenever I have an idea, they've already done it. There's a video online about it. Let me see the video. It's just a GIF. That's it? It's not doing the full completion yet.

Oh. Okay. And it's probably built around that. So what he does is he takes a pattern in there, locks it in place, and that's the printer, and then it just starts adding material to that pattern. Wow. Makes sense, man. And then it makes starts adding material to that pattern wow makes sense man and then it makes a wife beater put it on you fucking go to the pizza place order a slice it's funny

that they use wife beaters like why they decide to use a wife beater there right is that your uh target market the wife beater market yeah a lot of dudes who beat the shit out of their wives they like to make their own shirts it's just in in the future man i think medical technology is the most fascinating thing as far as mma like about like healing people like figuring out a way to uh fix brains figuring out a way to uh people that have been injured you know people that have been ko'd they're they're talking about uh you know taking people that have been injured and directly putting them in like cryo chambers and that the amount of damage that they can stop and the damage they can mitigate. And once they can figure out how to, right now there's no real technology to reverse brain damage. You know, like if they

break your, if you break your arm, they can fix it fix it you know if you have a knee injury they can fix your ligaments if you have a brain injury you're pretty fucked you know there's not a whole lot they can do you know they can help you try to heal yourself there's a little bit of therapy they can do there's a few new ways they can kind of mitigate the issues but for the most part when you have a brain injury you have a brain injury yeah put you in a helmet so you don't get worse. They really don't know. I've got a friend of the family, a girl I used to babysit, who had a terrible brain injury from that street luge sport. She banged the hell out of her head.

And the doctor just said, don't go outside for six months and don't read any books for six months. Don't read any books. Don't go outside for six months and don't read any books for six months. Don't read any books. Don't do anything. Just cocoon your entire consciousness from the entire outside world. Sterilize the house. And after, like, I think four months, she said, you can get a baby chicken. Because, you know, don't spend a lot of time with people because that's an awful lot of thought. And even a cat would be too interactive.

But she thought a little baby chick would be some human thing you could interact with a little bit. Low, low, low. But, you know, a top MD at Mass General Hospital saying buy a chicken to fix your brain indicates that the level of understanding is, as you said, very low. There's not much they can do. Don't even talk to people. Yeah. They do that. She had some family money and sort of

cocooned herself away. How old was she when this happened? Mid-40s. Oh my god. Mid-40s when it happened? Yeah. Whoa. So she was on a street luge? Like a skateboard type thing? Yeah. Rolling down the hill? I don't understand the sport well.

Like they do with the X Games. It's like a bobsled on wheels and they go down steep hills. It makes you think about all those videos that you laugh at on LiveLeak, where a guy gets fucking clipped on his ankles by a car and flips through the air and lands on his back. I can't watch any of those. How many people just get so fucked up by those things, and we never think about it again? Yeah, or the guy's dead. You see them on Tosh and those shows.

They get hit by a truck going across the highway. You're like, ha, ha, ha. I'm like, maybe that guy's dead or brain dead. Well, there was a guy in L.A. or California, Southern California, that got in trouble recently because they were drifting. And he drifted into a bystander. Clipped him. There's a video of it. See if you can find it on Joppa Link.

Drifter hits pedestrian and took off. I don't know what the story is, but they were all trying to find this guy, and it was a total hit and run. He clipped this guy with the side of his car as he was going sideways, and you would think you would, like, fall, like, got knocked back or something. No, you flip through the fucking air like you weigh nothing. You flip through the air like one of those little paper footballs.

You know when you do those things? He's playing great. Yeah, you remember those? That's what it looks like when this guy gets clipped sideways by his ankles and goes hurling through the air. It's terrifying.

And now, you know, my exposure to people getting hit in the head is so much more than the average person's. I don't think this is it, but it's one of them. Here's one. Oh, no, that's different. That guy got hit head on. That guy broke his legs.

This one, he got hit with the back, and he goes hurling through the air. But point being, I can't look at those anymore and not think about the consequences. look at those anymore and not think about the consequences. I know there's a woman who fights in the UFC that not even her last fight, but the fight before that, fucked her up so much that to this day she's got all these hormone problems, her cortisol levels are too high, she gains weight and she doesn't know why, she gets depressed, she doesn't know why, her equilibrium's all fucked up, and it's not even from her last fight. It's from the fight before her last fight

Yeah, and we don't think about it because we watch those fights. What a war Wow, those girls really fucking put it out there you move on you with your life and then she the lights go off You know the the spotlights are down and she's by herself her fucking hands going The throbbing and the pain and the aches. I'm sure both of you have experienced that before. Every day of the week, pretty much, at my gym. I'm like the punching bag at my gym. Here it is.

There it is. That's the one. Watch this. Watch this. He goes sideways. Watch this guy. See how the guy flies through the air? Look at this.

Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. It's crazy, right? Bing. Yeah, I don't want to watch that again. But don't go to the street while people are drifting, cocky bitch. Don't watch the street while they're doing it. Yeah, I don't know if they caught that guy.

Find out if they caught that guy. But the damage that these guys receive on a daily basis, like we were talking about the Rory McDonald fight or like a lot of these fights, you watch it and you don't think about it. You just go on with your life. But every now and then you'll run into one of those guys years later that doesn't fight anymore,

and you're like, whatever happened to that guy? And then you'll see him somewhere and you're like, oh, shit. And you'll talk to him and you'll hear him slurring their words. I remember the first time I was training in Boston and my boxing coach was this guy Joe Lake who wound up training Dana Rosenblatt. Remember Dana Rosenblatt? Dangerous.

Yeah, Dangerous Dana Rosenblatt, who was a training partner of mine. He was one of the guys that convinced me to stop fighting because I realized I wasn't training the way he was training because I was trying to do comedy and all these different things at the same time, but I was still fighting. I wasn't realizing how much dedication I had let slip by until I watched him train, I trained with him, and I realized, okay, I need to get out of here.

I was only 21 at the time. He was like 17 or 18. I think he was 18. But we trained at this gym with a bunch of really tough guys. And Joe Lake, who was my boxing coach, was that prototypical South Boston boxing trainer. It was fucking wars. It was wars in the gym every day. There was wars.

There wasn't no pity pad bullshit. You were going to war. And I watched a few guys that I knew from a few years back come in the gym and they would just slur and start talking funny. I was like, holy shit, I'm looking at fucking brain damage. Like I'm looking at it. And here's a guy that I knew five years ago and he didn't have it. And now I'm talking to him. I haven't seen him in a while, and he's got it. And it started to sink in. These headaches that I'm getting from these training sessions, this isn't free. I'm not immune. And you watch Joe Frazier talk on TV. Where do you think that came from? It came from getting punched in the head.

There's no way around it. The thing about it that I find that haunts me, and I'll be honest, it haunts me because it may start happening in our sport, is CT sometimes doesn't manifest itself until five or even ten years after retirement. The guy's fine, could be a commentator on TV. Everything in his brain is working well, and then five years kicks in, six years, and all of a sudden he starts getting a little more aggressive and his gait isn't as good. He becomes a different person and his soul starts to

to piss away and that's scary if that starts to happen it'll it'll give me pause that doesn't scare you chris you're just staring at the table thinking about your brain uh i don't know i've never been really hit hard enough i guess my head's gigantic i've never been hit hard enough so is gary goodrich you know guys you know guys in your gym though that have His head's gigantic. I've never been hit hard enough. So has Gary Goodrich. He's a gigantic head, too. You know guys in your gym, though, that have... Punchy? Yeah. I know guys that have fought, like, twice in their whole career and already, like, they

just, that one fight did them in and they should never fight again because they're just punchy. Well, you remember Julio Cesar Chavez and Meldrick Taylor? Yeah. They fought one time and Meldrick was never the same again. Chavez beat him into a different person. You know who also was like that? That's Sean Gannon. When he fought Kimbo for a half hour, he was never the

same from that day on. That fight was fucking crazy and that was an underground exclusive because everybody talked about that on the UG. That was a live streaming fight. You set that up? I set that up, yeah. That was after Kimbo had become this internet celebrity. What year was that?

2002 no later than two five to five ish because I had a drive drove home from college to get to that fight so To the 2004 yeah, I was in college in Boston still so someone was like dude Kim over scans going down in that hour You got to get down here. I'm like... Well, Kenny Florian posted about it on the UG. It still pops up. Does Kenny still post, or is he done? He's back.

He's back? Recently, yeah. He came back like a week ago. Well, he hasn't fought in a while. His feelings won't get hurt as bad. They talk a lot of shit on his commentary, though. Yeah, I'm sure they do. He's an excellent commentator.

He's very good, but it doesn't matter. People are cunts. Yeah. They talk shit on everyone who's good at their job, but they don't give a fuck. The people that don't give a fuck, they're just looking to be mad at anybody but their mom or whoever's fucking yelling at them at work or whatever your issue is. You're taking it out on Kenny Florian, but really you're mad that you live in your mother's basement. And that's the reality.

That's the reality. You know 100% this there's a certain amount of people that are just getting fined People mad at anything, but Kenny I think was posting about it on the the ug That's how I found out about it because I knew about Shawn I knew Shawn Gannon from the fight world and I knew about Kimbo obviously from these YouTube videos And I couldn't believe that they had actually organized a fucking real fist fight. And it went down. Jamie, pull that video up because that's a fucking goddamn crazy video. That was the first time Kimbo fought someone who actually knew how to fight.

And, you know, he became this Internet celebrity by just lighting these idiots up in backyards and move away from the satellite dish and, you know. Look out for that metal thing. That's the guy where everyone thought his eyeball came out of his eye, too, or something. He beat the fuck out of some people. And he showed some good hands, showed some good skills, but then he fought Sean Gannon.

And Sean Gannon, first of all, he was in shape. Yeah, he was in shape. And he had an iron chin, and he's a cop. And he's got an iron heart, too. Yeah, and he was a boxer. Golden gloves, at least, which isn't his, you know, it's not everything, but he was a boxer, for sure. He was in, like, the South Boston gyms forever, like, training. He was a good fighter.

They both came out of that wrecked. And the funny thing is they came up with a bunch of crazy rules in this fight, like, as it was going down. There was a 30 count. Mike Littlefield still has the rules written down. And it's got blood on it. It's crazy because Kimbo tagged him with a bunch of punches, but they weren't taking him out.

And after a while, Gannon started hitting the body. And we started working, like, this combination. I mean, he's tagging Kimbo. And Kimbo's hanging in there, and then here, Kimbo shoots. That was illegal. That was the first rule break of the entire fight was Kimbo shooting.

But Gannon is getting a stand-in guillotine. And he's holding on to him in a choke. And then all these... That was legal. According to the rules, a stand-in guillotine was legal. I think that's his brother. He had an alligator jacket and an alligator suitcase. The guy's touching them while they're fighting.

Yelling at them. And he's saying, let go, let go. And he's trying to pry them away. And then they're prying him away. He's like this crazy. Like, what are the fucking rules? I was very convinced I was going to get shot that night. No, all of Kimbo's guys had been disarmed.

Yeah. Well, they were cops, you know. And then Kimbo got him down. And Kimbo was trying to ground and pound him. Which was against the rules. Which was against the rules. So Kim was trying to ground and pound him. Which was against the rules. Which was against the rules. Against the rules. So Kimbo tried to ground and pound him, but Gannon got back up to his feet and just heart.

You know, you just couldn't wear Gannon out that easy. He was a guy who was used to brawling, too. He had been in the deep water before and figured out a way to swim. You know, and Kimbo, I don't think he'd really been in deep water. This was out a way to swim, you know? And Kimbo, I don't think had really been in deep water. This was like a first time. Hood fights were like a minute and a half long. Now you're looking at Kimbo is already exhausted, and Gannon is just starting to beat the fuck out of him.

And now, you know, Kimbo is, the punches are coming real labored. He's trying to push Gannon off the fucking wall. Were you there when we built that wall? No. We had to show up early and build that wall because they didn't have one there for this fight. That's funny. It didn't last long either.

This is a crazy fight that's available online. You can watch it. But I remember it was a bunch of us were live watching this and commenting on the underground while it was happening. I was reading the thread and watching the fight. I was like, this is crazy. We're all trying to figure out what was going to happen And they showed Shawn's face at the end of it

And that's when it really hit home because you watch this is all blurry grainy really shitty fucking Webcam video looking but you see the end if you see the end of the video They get a close-up of Shawn's face, and he looks like the Elephant Man. Yeah, we have all that old footage. We own that footage. Yeah, we own the copyright. How good is the footage? I think it's better than the webcam stuff because they had, like, at least, like, camcorders back then.

Look at his face. Like, when they're doing a 30 count and Kimbo's down, they gave him a 30 count, and eventually Kimbo just could not get up. But look at his face. And the first two times, his friends just picked him up and made him keep fighting. He never Kimbo just could not get up. But look at his face. And the first two times his friends just picked him up and made him keep fighting. He never got up from his own free will. Yeah. But Sean just look at he got up again. Yeah. He got

up again. Look he's like he's up and Sean punched him again like after that it's so crazy. I remember we someone easily could have died in that fight. Yeah. We part of the the rules were the winners got the footage. So there were like six guys with cameras. And so I see Mike and those guys, they all had their own cameras.

And Sean won. And we're like, hand over the tapes. So there's all this... We figured they'd just tape the fights. But there's all this footage of them driving up. Flying in their jet. Going to the hotel. And like, we're going to kill this.

I probably can't use their language here. Yeah, you can. All right. Come on, let's kill this guy. We're going. They're in like Rhode Island, in like the bad part of Rhode Island. It's hilarious. And I think I still have it somewhere.

Fuck. I think it's still on that old computer I have in my basement somewhere. So, Sean before this fight, and then Sean after the fight, what was the difference? Totally different. He was, like, he was, I don't think he was ever, like, super smart, but he was a coherent, smart guy, and I remember seeing him, like, a month

later, and I was like, this guy has brain damage. Like, he's, like, not right anymore. Just, like, had, like, this weird look to his face all the time. Did he get fired from that fight no because of that fight he did get disciplined bad he's still a cop now why did he because that picture was on the front page of the herald so saying cop on the beat it was just uh sort of when they considered it a bad publicity thing look at that picture police union got behind him and and uh he uh he stayed on the force well it's just sparring it's what it was

it's what it was it was it was a sparring match he's still on the force today uh i haven't talked to him about six months but we didn't talk about work last time i scroll up to that picture of the dude's eye right below that look at that that's the dude that kimbo fought what the fuck is going on with his eye his eyeball is out it's not in the right place. Is that what it is? I don't know. Or is it just swelling? I don't know what that is. That might not even be real.

That might be Photoshop. But it certainly looks like his eyeball is missing. And the way Kimbo was built back then, too, he was built so much different than he is now. Like, look at that picture right there, the Elite XC picture right below it where he's got his arms up in the air, Jamie. Click on that.

Like, he was swole. Yeah. And you see him now when he fought Ken Shamrock the other day. He just didn't look the same. He just looks like a completely different guy. That's the old Ken Shamrock one from the one Ken backed out of, and then he wound up fighting Seth Petruzzelli. Yeah, that's the old one, I'm pretty sure,

because Ken looks younger there too Ken already looks fairly old there but Ken backed out of the fight like last minute and then he fought Seth Petruzzelli and I knew that that was deep water for him I was like yeah this is

not your you can't fight that guy but look how good Ken looked there for a guy who's 51. That was a super disappointing fight, though. I couldn't believe that... Everybody thought that was a work, but I do not at all. I'm very confident it was... I just think it was two 50-year-old guys

fighting each other, and it's just not going to look like the best athletic competition. I just couldn't believe that Ken couldn't finish that rear naked choke. I thought that. Bring up a video of Ken from 20 years ago. Oh no, he does the same style.

He does the same thing. He cups like the top of the head. He doesn't come behind the neck. Like he does the same style of choke in 20 years ago. Guys didn't know what to do so they tapped to it. Yeah, there it is right there. You can see the picture of him with Kimbo. But Kimbo's not even defending. Yeah. I mean, he's not even grabbing the fucking, I don't, I just

couldn't imagine that Ken couldn't finish that that doesn't make any sense to me i mean it might not be a word i said it looked fake as fuck because it did kind of look fake as fuck but one of the things that might have made it look fake as fuck because it was a 51 year old man right who has fought combat sports for 20 plus years and his body just is not capable anymore i mean anybody like luke rockhole gets your neck like that good good night, bitch. It's over. You're going to sleep. You know, just a fact.

But just to see Ken not be able to finish a perfectly placed rear naked choke hand on the bicep, you know, most anybody who's really good at jiu-jitsu is going to finish that. It just doesn't make any sense. Or even not that great at jiu-jitsu. Yeah, I mean, a purple belt, a good purple belt. But it's sad that a guy like Ken, you know, is in this position in his life when he's, you know, he's a legend in this sport. You know, you think about a guy like Arnold Palmer. He never has to fucking work again.

You know, you look at a legend in baseball. Those guys don't have to work. Yeah, they never have to work again. You look at a legend like Ken Shamrock, he just missed the fucking money. Combat sports are all like that, though. I mean, look at Mike Tyson made $300 million and doesn't have $300 million now.

But that's because he pissed it all away. Ken Shamrock didn't make $300 million. They weren't paying guys $10 million a fight when Ken Shamrock was good. The guys like the GSP are making now. He didn't have that opportunity. I wonder what the most anybody's ever made for an MMA fight is.

It would have to be in the UFC. It would have to be a cut of a pay-per-view in the UFC. Probably four or five million for GSP. I think more than that. You think more than five? The rumor is that McGregor made four or five million. Well, I'm sure he had a piece of the pay-per-view and he fucking deserved it.

If anybody deserved a piece of the pay-per-view, it's deserved it if anybody deserved a piece of the pay-per-view it's mcgregor we were just talking about that in the car yesterday without him that card would have done 400 000 500 000 buys instead of a million you know what impressed me almost as much as his performance and the fight itself was the irish people i just couldn't believe they the fact i mean i said that like when i did the post-fight interview i'm like these people are incredible it's humbling that they flew all the way over there from Ireland to watch their guy fight There's not if you had a fucking American fight in Ireland good luck getting ten people get on a plane They're fly over to America brother sister and cousin. It's just not the same and somebody was like yeah, it's cuz they don't have anything So what so what it's you don? You don't think it's impressive

that they have so much patriotism and so much love for their countrymen that they planned way in advance. Those tickets sold out in the blink of an eye. And thousands of those 15,000 people, thousands, like 40%, came from Europe. And it's not like a rock concert where if it's a Stones concert,

you know it's going to be a phenomenal concert. Half the people lose every fight. And they could have flown all that, spent all their money, and he might have lost. Like Ricky Hatton when he fought Mayweather. Remember they were singing all those Ricky Hatton songs right before Mayweather put him to sleep?

Here we go, Ricky Hatton. Or the fight that sucked. Or the fight could have sucked. Or the fight could have been five minutes of boring, sucky fight. It could have been. It could have been, but they were willing to take the chance, and then they won. He won, and they won with them. I'm telling you, man, you never see celebration like that.

I had to run from place to place just to keep from getting accosted by Irish people that try to drag you into drinking with them. My brother was out there, and he said it was awesome to see. Everywhere he walked, there were crazy Irish guys. They were so pumped up and amped up. And they were singing. They were singing. I was leaving for my flight at like 7.30 in the morning,

and these guys were stumbling in, still singing. 7.30, fucked up, probably just getting home from the Spearmint Rhino. Hammered. It was amazing. It moved me. Because I had been there before when a lot of Brazilians had shown up to maybe see Anderson fight or something along those lines. But the level of patriotism that the Irish had was on a completely different scale.

It was another level, like several notches crazier. That's why I like, I mean, for me personally, my favorite shows are just the little amateur ones when I'm actually coaching or somebody that I've helped train or something. Because the more of a connection you have with a person, the deeper the fight becomes. And I think with those Irishmen, they're so tight as a nation that when he's in there, they feelmen they're they're they're so tight as a as a nation that uh

that when he's in there they're they they feel like they're right in there with him but and that must make the experience it's also transcendental too i hate watching guys look at that photo jesus fucking christ that's a crazy photo look at that shit 11 000 people were at the weigh-in right to watch guys take off their clothes and stand in their underwear it's insane and the roars the roars that those people were cheering screaming when he got on that scale there's nothing like it there's no one like him i mean ronda rousey is the other biggest star in mma at this point you know everybody talks about who's the biggest star in mma i love ronda rousey i think she's a one of a kind I don't think there's anybody that's ever been like her. I think she's spectacular. But she does not have nearly the appeal this motherfucker does.

It's not even close. How many Americans are flying to Brazil to watch her fight next? Me. Joe. It's my job. But I am very, very, very curious. I'm going not just because it's my job, but I'm very curious to see how they're going to treat her in Brazil,

whether or not this Beto Correa chick has that kind of love and respect, whether they think she has a chance, what kind of crowd's going to show up, what is it going to be like if Ronda beats her? When Ronda beats her, should I say? Yeah, when, right? I mean, anything can happen. Anything can happen. I learned that in the late 90s, or could have been the late 90s, And Ronda beat her, should I say? Yeah, it went great. I mean, anything can happen. Anything can happen.

I learned that in the late 90s, or could have been the late 90s. Pat Miletic fought Dan Severn. And I got the tape afterwards from Monty who promoted it. And they're doing the pre-fight interview, and they say, Pat, what do you think is going to happen? And Pat goes, I don't know what's going to happen. That's why we're having the fight. And he was fighting a guy who was 100 pounds heavier than him. i think it ended up being a draw but because nobody tapped anybody but pat pat really did win that fight and ever since then

i've been like you don't know what's gonna happen that's why you have the fight i mean yeah fights are crazy you throw bones at people you zig when you should have zagged and boom pretty sure we were all thinking when anderson silva beats chris weidman what's next I didn't think that no no no I didn't think I did I did not think that no I was saying I mean I wasn't lying when I did that pre-fight thing I'm like this guy's different he's he's he's a special kind of a destroyer you know there's something about Weidman he's so fucking strong what is that something because the three of us were talking about it in the car yesterday what is it I don know. Some guys have it some guys don't you know it's like What is it that makes a guy that fucking good? I don't know what it is

There's intangible qualities that some people possess And he's born that way Well, it's all of the above what we talked about his dad was in you know football player his fucking brother beat the shit out Of him all that stuff. I'm sure has an effect on his mental state and his resolve. He has unflappable will, unflappable resolve. He's just got this iron will, and you just sense it when you look at him. You sense it when you see him fight. You've got to beat that fucking guy.

He's not beating himself, and he's skillful. He's very good, very well prepared, tough as shit, can knock guys out. Can knock guys out with their hands. You ever see him fight Uriah Hall in Ring of Fire? Yeah. Yeah, he caught Uriah Hall with his long left hook. Boom! And put him away standing.

I mean, he puts guys away standing, puts Mark Munoz away with that fucking brutal elbow. He's no joke, man. He's an animal. You know, and now as a middleweight champion, what's fascinating right now is now that he's passed Vitor, which was sort of a mandatory fight, there are so many good fights there.

There's Jacare, Yoel Romero, Luke Rockhold. Fuck, man. It's a mother's row lining up. Oh, God. You know? I mean, the way Rockhold beat down machida like fuck and then the ray romero did the same goddamn thing he beat him down too it's like the the contenders are rising to the top they're clearly being established and jacare i mean you want to talk about world

class jujitsu that guy's insane he's insane he's so fucking good. And so strong. The 205 division I felt like five years ago or four years ago or something was kind of like that. You had Jon Jones on top and everybody else in the top ten was a killer. But it's definitely 185 right now. 205 is actually pretty weak right now. That division, right? Relatively. Hopefully Jones

comes back eventually. Gets his life in order and comes back. That situation is so sad. You're not hearing anything from John. I'm sure he's got all sorts of legal problems. Which is good. He should stay out of the media and just take care of his shit right now. Yeah.

Clear his mind and his life and make restitution and do whatever he's got to do. And hopefully he'll be back again. But you want to talk about talent. Hopefully, man. I want to see him back. Get his shit together and come back and just be on top again. Because that guy was incredibly talented. I watched all his fights because he grew up fighting in Massachusetts

because New York, they couldn't fight. So all his fights were in Massachusetts. And I saw that kid fight three times. This kid's got it. This kid's going somewhere he fought six times in three months three months, six times

three weekends in a row once then took a last minute fight in the UFC wow it was incredible my first experience was I was cornering somebody at a show in Massachusetts and Chris I think my guy lost, I'm just kind of sitting there, arm around him, giving him water or whatever, and Chris goes,

there's this new guy, and he's had some fights, and it's only been five seconds. You can't, come here. And so he grabs me, and we go running up to the cage, and it was over. The fight had ended in 19 seconds, and I know the guy he fought, and the guy he fought is, like, tough and got crushed by him, and Chris just said,

this guy is going to be the next one. Wow. That's amazing. He's a murderer. I'm so lucky he never fought Tom. He was supposed to fight Tom Waller for the local title. Really? Yeah, because Tom Waller fought in Massachusetts.

He's a Massachusetts guy originally. And they're supposed to fight for the title. I had set it all up for Tom. I'm like, oh, he looks good, but Tom you can fight him and like a week later the UFC called John Jones And I'm like thank God that fight never happened or Tom I never had a UFC career I mean not to say he would have lost for sure, but it was a tough fight to take you know in retrospect He would have lost for sure What are you lying to people?

What are you doing? What are you, lying to people? Anything can happen. Anything can happen in the fight, and Tom hits hard, so. Yes, he does. Most people thought he was going to lose this fight last weekend. It was a tough fight for him, for sure. He was getting beat up, and he had taken 27 months off. Ring rust is real.

Why did he take so much time off? So, I cornered him. This is funny. I cornered him in the Michael Kuiper fight sweden and uh we walk in after the first round and he looks at this he's like i think i blew my fucking knee and i'm just like what do you mean you blew it i blew my knee and so the other corner his uh jiu-jitsu coach is like you should sit down he's like i can't i won't be able to get back up whoa and we're like all right he's like what should i do should we not fight i'm like do you want to fight he's yeah so go out there and stand up and he guillotines the guy in the second round chokes him unconscious and tore his acl completely blew his acl wow and so he recovered for like a

year and then blew his meniscus in the same knee and so then another six month recovery and just then he had to book a fight and get back in shape. It's just injury after injury on the same knee. What do guys do? I've always wondered. What does a guy like Tom Lawler, who doesn't make that much money, what do they do for money when that happens? Well, Tom's made some good money in the UFC that he could sit on. And Tom's filthy.

He doesn't need nice things. So he won a bonus at UFC 100, which was $100,000. Oh, okay. And he went and bought a condo in Providence, which wasn't expensive. Like, bought it straight out. In Rhode Island? Yeah. He's from that area. Did he live there?

No, he did. He lived there for years. That's where he grew up, like Swansea, Somerset area. And he liked Rhode Island because everything's a small city. Everything's closed. He lived in the nastiest condo you've ever been in. It was like cat piss

everywhere and like, just like smell the, you know, everything. It was terrible. But, you know, he doesn't need all the money.

So for him, like $100,000 is like five years of living because he doesn't need, you know, nice amenities, nice things. And he just teach

Jiu-Jitsu here and there and do seminars and i don't think he's i don't think he's worked a regular job since since after before fighting he was like a high school history teacher for a while and then just got into fighting and that's it wow he just figured out a way to survive on you know not having a lot it's a hard world out there for guys who are like the lower level guys that are trying to make it. It's a very, very hard world. It's very, very difficult for those guys to make enough money to actually get by.

It's terrible. I have a guy that fights in the UFC now that went back to having a real job full time. Still fights, but has a job. He's a corrections officer. Who's that? Joe Proctor. He has a full-time job now? He's six fights into his UFC career and has a full-time job watching inmates at Plymouth County.

That's crazy. That's a suck job, too, by the way. I had a training partner that did that. He would have horror fucking stories about people throwing shit on him. Oh, yeah. They do that. They throw shit at you. There was a guy who used to help out from Massachusetts.

He was actually from Connecticut, and he was a good fighter. I think he probably had UFC potential, and then he decided the future's not for me. And so he told me, you know, I got sort of bad news. I'm going to go to law school instead of fighting. I was like, hallelujah. That's awesome. What do you do when a guy's going through your gym and he wants to fight and you know he's got no shot? Do you just say, look, you've got to figure this out for yourself?

Like, you've got a guy who's uncoordinated and, you know, not tough, but for whatever reason decides to fight. Tell him it's not for them. You tell him. Straight up tell him you can't fight from here. I said there's unscrupulous promoters that are looking for sharks versus fish. I explained the whole deal to them, how the sport works at the low level. There's big ticket sellers that are going to sell 200 tickets at $50 each, $35 each. And the promoter is always looking for some fish to feed to the sharks

so that the guy will have 200 friends show up and win, and the next time they're ordering, I say, you can get a fight. Like there's a million unscrupulous promoters in this state that will give you a fight, but it's not good for you. It's a dangerous sport, so you can't fight out of here. And sometimes they keep going, but not usually. Because it's not the type of sport where you can be nice to people. It's too important. If you tell a girl to people it's it's it's it's it's too important um you know if you tell a girl she's pretty and she's not or something there's no bad consequences but if you

let somebody think they have a chance of fighting and really they're not very good they can get a scrambled brain a lot of people don't do that man a lot of people just let them figure it out for themselves yeah i see it in other gyms our gym if you're not we don't think you're ready to fight you don't fight and guys will leave they'll go to the Taekwondo school that lets them fight MMA with no experience. And then you just see them get killed because they're just not prepared. Guys that come to our gym don't fight for years, even amateurs. They come in and they learn everything. They learn how to wrestle, jujitsu, kickbox.

And then maybe if you think they're ready, you take a fight. What's your gym? So people will listen. Lowe's on MMA back in Massachusetts. L-A-U-Z-O-N, right? Yes. Lose on MMA. We've got to wrap this up.

Anything else you want to say? Mixedmartialarts.com, the website. Fuck the OG. Fuck the OG? I thought it was... Fuck the UG. I got that side. Fuck the UG.

Fuck them both. Okay. Well, you guys... Seriously, though, best mixed martial arts website in the world. You guys are always on top of the news. You always misspell people's names. It's great.

You misquote me almost every time. Every day. But it's, like, as far... I still post all the fucking time. I'm one of the last of the Mohicans. I'm still in there getting shit on, called a fag, and whatever they want to call me.

Dick Ryder. No matter what, you're going to get shit on. But I think overall, I look at it the opposite way. I'm an optimist. I think it's like 10% douchebags, 90% cool people. Maybe. But either way, you guys have fucking made it through

the storm that was the beginning of mma and i think this website was an integral part of keeping the the core fan base alive so uh kirk thank you very much for everything that you've done i really really appreciate it gave me a place to waste a lot of fucking time and uh talk a lot of shit about all kinds of different fights and and read a lot of cool information and news and whenever anybody's hurt or breaking news, I always find out about it on the underground. Imagine if you tracked the hours you spent on.

Like, how much would that be of your life? Probably too much. I was one of the first 400, so shit. It would be a lot. 15, 17 years, a couple hours a day maybe? A lot of goddamn wasted time. But thank you. I don't want to be an ass kiss, but I will be.

As I've told these guys before, when there's a UFC that you're not on, to me, and again, I don't want to sound like an ass kiss, but it's just what I've said, not in front of you, but to these guys previously, it doesn't feel like a UFC without you there. The weigh-ins aren't just, it's just not the same. So thanks to you for making the UFC the UFC for for me well thank you very much man I appreciate it all right mixedmartialarts.com go check it out and love the UG love the OG take it easier

buddy Cheers