The Joe Rogan Experience - #762 - Robin Black

Episode Date: February 19, 2016

Robin Black is an MMA analyst and color commentator for Fight Network. Also check out his fight breakdown's on the UFC Youtube channel -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-_-Mmmzvs0

Doom, doom, doom. Da-dum. Amber Live. My man, I wish people who weren't watching on YouTube could just see the majesty that is the jacket that Robin Black is wearing right now. How would you describe that? It's just a jean jacket, man.

It's a colorful jean jacket. I like colorful stuff. It's definitely colorful, but it's not just colorful. It's like you're trying to blend in in a rave. Well, it could be. It does have some camouflaging effects. Yeah, if you were hunting in a rave, that's what you would wear. Exactly.

I don't know what you'd be hunting there. Pussy? Yeah, I guess. Ecstasy? Yeah. It's like a light blue with purple, some sort of decorations. Camouflage is a weird thing. I like when you see guys walking down the street with camouflage and it's

like, it's what if they really were camouflage? Like you just see a head floating down the street. Well, one day they're going to have that. Have you ever seen that Japanese invention they came up with? They have this, um,

like a cloak that you can wear and it essentially takes an image of what's behind you and projects it on the front. That's invisibility. Yeah, it's kind of crude right now, but what it is is the guy's standing. You can see it right here. Look at this. That is ridiculous. Isn't that nuts?

That is wild. So what we're looking at is a guy holding a ball, and the ball does it. And so the ball, somehow or another, he's holding it in front of his face, and it doesn't show him when it's in front of him. It shows what's behind him. Crazy. I don't know how that one's working. Yeah, I don't know.

So here's the cloak. I've seen the cloak before. But, you know, you can still see the cloak. Well, that's the thing with that kind of technology. Once it starts, then you're on your way. Exactly. And then whether it's in one year or three years or twice 12 years You're gonna be invisible. Yeah, it's we're in such a strange time because these emerging things are just starting to come out Where where people go? Oh?

Whoa, you know like magic leap if you've seen that magic leap technology I just retweeted a new version of it today that somebody sent me it's like god damn it it just keeps getting so bad. Was it Magic Leap or was it the Microsoft one? Which one's the – one's the Google one and one's the Microsoft one? Magic Leap is the Microsoft one. Which one did I tweet today? I'm looking right now.

But they've – HoloLens. HoloLens. Microsoft is HoloLens. That's Microsoft. They've got these new goggles that you're going to be able to wear, and it's going to be like Minority Report. Like the world is going to be your desktop. You're going to be able to spin things in the air, stop them, expand them, contract

them. I mean, you knew that was coming. Yeah. Like, as soon as you see it on a movie, you know that's going to happen. The one thing right now, it's like, we are in probably the fastest time of change ever. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, if you have an idea, that idea can be done. It's just a series of steps to have to change ever. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like if you have an idea, that idea can be done.

It's just a series of steps to have to do it. Yeah. I mean, I think if you go back just a few, is this it right here, Jamie? Yeah, it's just a picture. Just pictures of them using it? Like how crazy that's going to be, man. You're going to be able to like see movies play out in your living room right in front of you. Video games.

You know, if you were doing a a demonstration for a company or something like that and you wanted to show them a project you're working on or maybe some architecture you're trying to construct. Insane. Fucking crazy times. And the first thing people are going to start doing is, how do we connect this to sex? Oh, yeah.

Right away. That's where the money is. Somebody's thinking of that right now. Yeah, people are going to be able to fuck right in your living room. That's what the new porn's going to be. The thing is, I can fuck in my living room yes right you can do it yourself i could yeah do it yourself world we need to get back to that people get back to doing things actually not just watching yeah that is that is a weird thing i mean as much as you know you make comedy

and fighting and podcasts and stuff it's still strange that people watch stuff all the time. Don't you find? People love to be entertained. Yeah. I do. Yeah. Yeah. We like to just have other people do the shit.

Just sit back and watch. Yeah, but do you define, this is something I always kind of wonder about you, how you can possibly consume so many interesting and unrelated topics and develop expertise in so many unrelated things while being a content maker. Like you're making stuff that people consume. How can you possibly be mastering all these things at once?

I don't really have any. I'm not. I've mastered anything. You know, I'm pretty good at comedy. I throw some good kicks. I know jujitsu pretty well. I'm not a master at any of those things yeah but I mean you're bow hunting you're you know there's so many different things you know like I literally do fighting stuff all day every day and when I get a break I hang out with my wife and sometimes I'll take a day off and that's it I don't know

about other stuff it it fascinates me how you can possibly know about so many things that seem unconnected. I assume that it's probably something wrong with my brain. I assume that it's like an extreme form of ADD, but I need a bunch of different things going on in my mind, in my life. If I don't have a bunch of different things going on i don't i don't feel stimulated enough i'm almost the opposite it's like i literally specialize so deeply in something once i know something about it i need to know way more about it right and when i know stuff about that that opens up a ton of new questions and that's why it's the same kind

of area of stuff that i am obsessively researching and studying. I do that too, but I just do it with a bunch of different things. That's what I mean. That's what I'm getting at. I listen to archery podcasts where they're just talking about very specific ways to hold a bow and fix your sight and make sure you use your release properly. I'll listen to those fucking things for hours and hours and hours obsessively on top of practicing. I just get obsessed with things.

But I used to worry about it when I was younger. I used to be like, what the fuck is wrong with me? I can't just concentrate on one thing. I always have all this other shit going on in my life. But then I realized, well, that's just me. If I just enjoy it and just do those things, then it doesn't concern me. Then I'm just appreciative that I have so many interests. Did you ever read some piece somebody wrote,

something about, oh, I hate Joe Rogan, or why I hate Joe Rogan, and then he went on this path, and he discovered that he actually hated that you were your authentic self. Have you ever read this? Somebody wrote this thing. And as he learned more about what it was to be authentically him, he realized his hatred for some famous person was that he was looking at him and he hated that that guy was actually him. It's easy to hate somebody that's like in the microscope all the time because you'll find all

these flaws. Like if you follow someone every day, day in, day out and expect perfection or enlightenment, you're going to be massively disappointed because the kind of exposure that you get when you're doing a podcast, like when you're talking to someone for hours and hours and hours, you know, I've done 700 and what is this? 762? 762 podcasts. The shortest one is an hour. Most of them are three hours. That's 2,100, almost 2,500 hours. Somewhere around that, give or take. But you're going to get annoyed at me. I get annoyed at me. But his point wasn't that.

It was that you are authentically Joe Rogan. Whatever it is you do, you ended up being, I mean, you're sitting here in a place that you built to do the thing that you want to do exactly the way you want to do it. You're as authentically a human being as a person can be. I guess so. You know? Like when you're talking about accepting why you go and do things the way that you do them, that's why you do.

Because you're like, fuck being some other thing. I'm going to be this thing. Well, that's just, I think Having this kind of a life is super lucky And if I didn't live it that way I wouldn't be taking advantage of this huge opportunity that very few people get Most people have to work. Yeah, they have an actual fucking job that they don't really necessarily like that much and Somehow or another I've figured out a way I mean I worked when I was younger for sure and I figured out how to get to this spot by sort of moving away from things that I didn't want to do. But now that I get to

a point where everything I do, whether it's this, I was looking forward to this. I'm like, I'm going to get to hang with my friend, Robert. We're going to have some fun, talk some MMA and life and all kinds of shit. And that's the same thing. I feel like when I go do standup, same thing. I feel like when I'm practicing archery or I'm working out. These are things I enjoy doing. And that's why I do what I do. And I really believe people can do that. I think you just have to start, first of all, by figuring out what it is you want to do. Because if you don't know that, then you're just going to start wandering.

But the thing is, if you push somebody, they all know. Most people really know what it is that they love. I find that young people a lot of times don't. Like a lot of young folks, when I talk to them, they just don't have a path. Like, God, I just need to find something to do. I'm thinking about doing this, or maybe I'll join the military to get some guidance and some discipline, or maybe I'll do that. It's hard to tell because what's cool for you, Jamie might not like. What Jamie might like, I might not like. Jamie was trying to find uh kanye west shoes all last night i don't like that but he probably thinks this jacket is mother fucker was up all night trying to get kanye west

you know it's true yeah it's for everybody everybody's different you know i think you got to figure out what it is you like doing because the path of going to do that is the whole point yeah it's not people often be like well i want to get this kind of job or i want to buy this kind of house and it's not it's not supposed to be that way in my opinion you're supposed to start on a path and on that path traveling along it you're having adventures you're stumbling onto new things and the challenge of it being really hard to achieve is part of what gets you up every day yeah and it's also fun yeah watching things improve watching yourself get better at things and analyzing things and figuring out what the whole the holes are the flaws where the where

the errors are in your little system that you've created those those those moments are fucking awesome they're really fun yeah it's just you know what reallyrates me, really frustrates me when talking about these things? Sometimes I'll get messages from people and they'll say, well, that's easy for you to say because, you know, you got lucky and you found it. But, like, you know, a lot of people can't do that. A lot of people have responded. And they'll come up with all these reasons why they can't instead of saying, well, my situation is particularly difficult, but there's a workaround and I'm going to find it. Yeah.

It might take me a year. It might take me a decade. I'm going to find it. If wherever it is, you're ending up is somewhere in the future. You don't know what that is. And now it's like, well, I would like to do that thing I got to do, but I have all these responsibilities. Okay.

Our new job, figure out how to take care of those responsibilities. That's step one. Do you know what Maslow's hierarchy of needs? That idea that first we have to like, you got to eat, you got to stay dry, and you got to drink water. And once we've kind of accomplished that kind of stuff, that's out of the way, then we start to go a little further. How do we become safer? Once that happens, you climb up to the point that you're actually eating, sleeping, having sex, you have a place to live, you have a job, and now you're trying to

learn more things. And it's just a natural kind of transition to get smarter and move. But it's easy to say that the hard part, I think, is starting going that way. Yeah, you know, the hard part is going, okay, this isn't working. Well, what if I got some exercise? Maybe that would help. For some people, that path isn't what job do I got to start tomorrow? That path is like, well, I'm unhealthy or I don't think my thought processes aren't things that lead me this way. So you got to start way low on that thing and start getting that shit together. Eat good, get sleep, and exercise. Everybody should have to do those things.

Our society should be shaped in a way that you have to do those things. Because if you aren't doing those things, right there, you're starting from a place where you're just not performing as well as you could. It's so hard to tell people that, though. They don't want to hear it. They just love that food porn. They just love just shoving donuts in their face. Oh, yeah. Pasta

and just fucking sugar. Just eating it all day. It's tasty shit. But there's a lot of things that are terrible for you that are great. Heroines. I've only been in

Woodland Hills three times. This is the second time I've been on your show. The other time was the time I was on heroin for four days. That's the only other time I was in. Four days?

For four days. In Woodland Hills. I was 20 years old. Damn. Yeah, it was weird. Shooting up? Yeah. Yeah.

It was very strange. That's a commitment. Yeah. It didn't start that way. Like all things. Nobody grows up and says, I'm going to do really stupid things. I was like 20, and I lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba. And I was really into music.

And I came down here for, I was a hairdresser at the time. And so, and this jacket would work perfectly. So would your hair. Yeah, my hair, exactly. So, and I was down here doing some, like, I would do platform work where I would, like, demonstrate how to do stuff for other hairdressers and people. I would do platform work where I would like demonstrate how to do stuff for other hairdressers and people. And I went to – not the Viper Room. One of those clubs.

And this pretty woman comes up to me and says, are you a musician? And I'm like, yeah. And I'm kind of about to say, but I live in Canada. And she goes, well, my husband is putting together a band and you got to meet him. His name is Andy McCoy. And Andy McCoy wouldn't mean much to a lot of people, but to somebody who was really into like Motley Crue and stuff like that. He was in a band called Hanoi Rocks that was kind of started that movement. I'm like, whoa, shit, I'm going to be famous. Like I'm going to be rich and famous.

Not knowing that, although Metal Edge told me that this guy was a big deal he was just a musician but i to a 20 year old from winnipeg so oh my god i'm gonna be in a huge fucking band so i go and i meet him we go to his house in woodland hills and i actually i've been here four times there was that time that i flew home to winnipeg and they flew me back down because they were gonna get me singing in their band i'm like 20 years old this guy's like famous to me right so i get down there and that shit is not all that organized you know what i mean like something's not making a lot of sense and then around day two i figured out okay it's because everyone's on heroin and it started we had smoked some pot which in winnipeg in manitoba we called that dope you

want to smoke some dope it's like sure it was like so he goes do you do dope i'm like yeah i just smoked it with you like 20 minutes ago because no like and then before i knew it he'd injected me with heroin like a conversation sort of happened i was trying to be a not super uncool but like not saying yes i want to do heroin and then four days went by like literally just shooting up for four days and then i just about missed my plane home so I had a girl and a home and a job and all those kinds of things and I'm kind of looking at like the plane ticket and I know it's like okay if I get a cab in the next two hours I'll get the plane I'll get home or whatever and he's like well just you know and you're not even thinking it's like you're

barely even there and somewhere along the line I just like, don't worry about it. Just fine. You don't have to get on the plane. I probably got $100 to my name. And if I didn't get on that plane, I'd have no job, no girl. I'd be a heroin addict with no money in Woodland Hills with a guy who doesn't have his shit together. I think in the years since, he's got his shit together. I haven't seen him since then.

And I made myself go. And I was sick for two or three days. And I realized like literally that second in time, if I don't convince myself to get on that plane, my whole life is fucking ruined. Whoa. Yeah. Like I just so vividly remember talking my, trying to talk myself into just fuck it. Stay here. Don't worry about it. And then I would think to myself, well, what are you going to do? When are you going just fuck it stay here don't worry about it and then i would think to myself well what are you gonna do when are you gonna get home don't

fucking worry about it man and i just forced my and i was literally convincing myself don't bother don't worry it's not a big deal but it was obviously a big deal and i got home i was sick for two days and i've never taken an opiate or any kind of painkiller ever again. So you were sick, like hungover? Yeah, like a violent form of it. Was it withdrawals? Probably, right? Probably. Like you'd have to talk to, you know, in the course of playing in music, I've met lots

of people who have opiate problems and they would say, oh man, four days, that's nothing. But to a person who, you know, to a person who was a normal person, and then all of a sudden they were doing drugs for four days, it probably was, yeah, violent withdrawal. So it was very sick. And I knew that day, it's like, I'm just never going to take any kind of narcotic or painkiller like that ever again. Wow.

So that was the second last time I was in Woodland Hills. Well, the idea that you could just become that person like that you just meet the wrong person hey man you want to do some dope oh yeah we just did dope yeah all sudden you're on heroin yeah and and there's lots of those little moments in everybody's life yeah you know and you don't it's a big one but you don't know where when they are or where they are or how they start You're just suddenly you know what I mean many less as we get older we start to get a little smarter you recognize big risks

Earlier on down the road as you get older a life experience helps you with that shit But yeah, that's I was thinking that on the way here today I was like oh yeah but I mean that's 25 26 years ago so did you ever talk to that guy again uh we were in touch about maybe still putting this band together and then he was clearly you know had addiction issues I followed him a little bit after he um he uh had a reality show he's from Finland and he's a pretty big rock star in Finland and he and his, who was there at the time, that was the woman that I met, they had a reality show with, you know,

kind of like what Ozzy did, but with them. Whoa. Yeah, so crazy. Finland. Yeah, Finland, yeah. How many people are in Finland? Probably about half as many as Canada would be my guess, which is about 30 million,

so 15 or 20 million, maybe. And this guy's just a big rock star over there? I think so. I mean, the whole music world is such a different life to me now. I've been so deeply embedded in fighting for the last decade. I don't know about much else. He could be the president of Finland right now for all I know. I just don't consume a lot of other things.

You know what's shocking to me? I have a lot of friends now that are musicians that are doing really well and not making much money. Yeah. It's fucking, it's eerie. It's eerie when you find out that these guys who you think would be ballers are like kind of struggling. Yeah, that business is dead. It's crazy.

It's not just, but the touring is what I don't understand. It's like, how come they're not making all this money from touring? But I guess it's like a comic has a much lower overhead. Comics just, we don't need anything. Just turn the microphone on and we're good. They need support. They have all these other people that are there. They have people that carry their stuff.

Roadies, sound people. Lights. Lights, yeah. They have other people in the band, obviously. When we went and saw you at Car there that was awesome too by the way i was from the theater at the mgm that doing that again next month yeah cool yeah this is the shit uh so something like that do you have anybody else like is there a sound guy is it the house guy like do you have a house guy yeah they just have to turn the mic on that's amazing yeah well it's just so low maintenance being a comedian you just have to you know sell tickets and you get

there and you say hi and you just go do your act except for the 30 years of developing your act yeah building it and having you know the insight to understanding how people laugh and all that kind of stuff yeah you're sort of developing your ability to make an act, but the act itself is like it lives for about two years, and then it dies. Then you have to let it go. You build it up, you put it on something, put it on some sort of a special or a CD or something like that,

and then you've got to abandon it. Wow. And then you move on to the next two hours. And in those two years, I'm going to pull this back to fighting because everything gets pulled back to fighting. I've been trying to just go, you don't have to talk about fighting all the time. I've been telling myself that outside of work regularly, actively trying to find other things to know about or learn about. But you build like structures around something. So Johnny Hendrix goes to fight Stephen Thompson.

His whole world has been built like that act for years. He built that thing, and structures were built around how to perform that act that way. And then all of a sudden it's just dated. It's just not going to work in this setting. Yeah, it's completely dated when you're dealing with this there's two things that wonder boy did in that fight um that you're you just didn't see up until he came around and uh one big one was the front leg attacks his front leg side kick and front leg roundhouse kick to the face you see he hit johnny with a front leg side kick to the body you can see it really shook johnny And then immediately afterwards, he goes high and hits him with a front leg roundhouse kick right in the chin.

And he's like, what in the fuck? Like this guy can do some shit with his feet that I'm just not geared up for. He didn't have the timing for. Johnny was in a gym boxing with boxers. Lots and lots of boxers. His hands are great great he's got it he's moving around as long as guys stand in front of him and it's like that literally what steven thompson did and what you're the really exciting thing you're seeing right now is this weird moment

where it's like you're a great wrestler so what am i need to i gotta go learn to wrestle you don't have to fucking learn to wrestle we We're going to do that anyways. We've got to learn to make it not about wrestling. We've got to make it so, I mean, MMA developed by finding the answer to the thing. And somewhere, all of us, every coach, every one of us, five years ago, seven years ago, we were like, well, that's it. It's boxing, wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu this cage work this is how fighting is done that's it we're fucking way wrong yeah so when that when we think that we start building a structure gym environment curriculums how we train and that thing gets

more ingrained and complicated and you go to the gym you work these four or five things and some guy over here is working other stuff and And our whole gym is like that. And all our training partners are like that. And we're working the mixed martial arts curriculum. But some other guy isn't. And when he develops that thing, we're not prepared for it. We're just not prepared for it. Yeah, sport karate.

That's sport karate blitz. That's something that Thompson can do, but also he came from a kickboxing background so he's got the sport karate ability to leap in sort of like Raymond Daniels who fights in glory he's got that leap in attack ability that's very difficult to deal with if you don't have that kind of footwork and then on top of that he can string together beautiful hand combinations so he'll he'll slide in blitz you with four or five beautiful hand combinations, and then slide away and then kick you in the stomach as he's sliding away. And you're like, Jesus Christ. You can see the bewildered look on Johnny's face in that fight.

Yeah, and he's a brilliant fighter. He was the champ. He was the champ. He was a tough guy. But Johnny's got that style where he'll stand like Johnny and Robbie. They'll stood in front of each other. And you're just not going to find that with Wonder Boy. No.

He's just not there. That's what this guy's trying to. Yeah. That's the game he's going to try to play. This guy, he's holding up a plastic cell. Is it plastic cell? Plastic cell? It looks cool.

They sent us a Conor McGregor doll. Yeah, it's all stumpy and angry. The same guys who sent the Biggie doll. They sent us a Conor McGregor and Jamie's got a Tupac over there. There's a Bruce Lee for Joey Diaz. That's cool. But that's what he'll try to do. But what he can do with his feet is not nearly at the level that Stephen Thompson is.

Stephen Thompson's doing some shit with his feet. The way he's throwing kicks, they're deadly. I mean, he's one of the best kickboxers that America's really ever produced. That's amazing. 57 and 0 as a kickboxer. Yeah. So then you go and train with Weidman, right? And Weidman roughs you up and Weidman's work ethic and the whole thing rubs off on you and you just start getting familiar with

it. And it is, yeah, I can defend takedowns but more importantly we ain't fucking wrestling we're not gonna wrestle and it seems him cruz cruz is a fucking absolute genius all these guys even demetrius and matt hume they play this game so we're sitting here and like can we we can't wrestle from here right so for you to get to me you have to travel through space. As you move forward two feet, I move back two feet. You move that way two feet. And you play this game where we keep the space forever. And I just keep that space as long as you want me.

I'm making that space. And when the space is there, either you're going to get so lulled into it that I can dart in. And Wonder Boy's weapons are his kicks, but some guys will do it with their hands. Dart in and hit you. Or you start chasing me. You chase me, I intercept you and fuck you up. And it's just so logical. And you're looking at it now.

And just the way that the karate guys had to go learn to wrestle, or did they? They had to learn to not wrestle, to make it not about wrestling as much as possible. The Johnny Hendricks, the Matt Hughes style of fighter, they've got to figure this out. They have to figure it out. Well, you know, what happened was he learned how to get comfortable standing up, where he didn't worry about being taken down all the time. And then you got to see what he's really capable of with his striking. Because you look at his earlier fights, he was a little more tight because he was worried

about being taken down. So all that takedown defense, I mean, he always had the great footwork, but now he also has a solution if you do grab him. So when guys grab him, he's not out of water. He knows what to do. He can break free again. And it is way harder to take someone down when they're not trying to wrestle with you. If someone's trying to be aggressive and attack, you can counter,

and you can take advantage of openings that they leave. But when someone is just being defensive, like if jiu-jitsu, if you roll with someone, it's very hard to tap someone who's just being defensive. They're not trying to attack. It's when they open up and they go after you, that's when you can get them. That's when they leave openings.

I think the same thing with wrestling. These guys, like Merkle Kkoff was a great example when he first started fighting in pride he took you know just like a year or so and all of a sudden he had takedown defense figured out and everybody was fucked because then you got to stand with this guy and he was one of the best examples of a high level kickboxer that entered into mma because he was always a one-shot explosive striker, whereas a guy like Ernesto Hoost was a combination fighter, a guy who threw beautiful, technically perfect combinations, but never really like, bah, like blitzed in and exploded.

And it seems like the blitz is a big part of MMA fighting. Yeah. It's not, I mean, the technical striking for sure is important, but I think you've got to be able to make that mark quickly, especially with those little gloves. Yeah, and the footwork, if it gets you over here that I have to take one step to center back into you, then you blitz me there. That's what Dominic's doing for the last number of years. And then he starts—now he gets so good at that thing. for the last number of years. And then he started,

now he gets so good at that thing. You can't quite figure out how to even, Anthony Johnson is so good at staying in balance to hit you. Wherever you are, he's in balance to hit you. Because Henry Hooft looked at him and was like, what's the key to this guy?

Just put him in a place where he can always hit. Put him in a place where he can deliver with power. He's really good at that. Small little steps. But Dominic Cruz could dance all around him. Dominic Cruz can move it so that he has to step back to hit him.

That's when he'll get in. Then he gets so good at that one thing, he just starts camouflaging with other things. Now you don't know when it's coming. Now maybe you hesitate. Oh, when you hesitate, he has an option. When you chase, he has more options. You think it's better to stay still, so you do. Then you hesitate he has an an option when you chase he has more options you think it's better to stay still so you do then you get beat up so then you think i better get

after him and then when you do you get intercepted and that whole thing must become so frustrating you know so mentally frustrating then you're like i gotta take this guy down and in some cases that's what they're waiting for you know yeah hit you on the way in it's just that game is so it it's it feels like the big difference now if you can't do that if i can't do that and you can yeah what the fuck am i gonna do i have to fight panic that was ali and his youth you know when ali was young before they took away his title and he was uh kicked out of boxing for three years and then he came back he's much more flat-footed but the early days days, when you would watch Ali fight guys, he would be able to move away from them and then slide back in and hit them. And they really didn't have a solution to that.

And when you don't have a solution to that, it means you're getting hit and you're not being able to hit the other guy. And just think of that. You know, you can ready yourself for that. You're prepared. You know it's a challenge, but you've been working on answers. Like, I thought for sure Dwayne Ludwig with TJ, they would have worked on, like, situational things. And maybe they did. It's like when he's here, we're either going to option A or B.

We know these are some of his choices. Big, broad strokes answers. And they worked sometimes. I mean, when we look back in that fight, I thought Dominic won. But TJ had the moments where he had the biggest shots or the cleanest shots. There was only half a dozen of them in 25 minutes. But you saw that was the answer. But it must be incredibly frustrating to be in there.

You're mentally prepared for it. You got the answers. And as the minutes are clicking away, you're like, oh, shit. It's true. Someone lied to me. That feeling must be the worst. When you're in there, you're like, oh, shit. It's true. Someone lied to me. That feeling must be the worst. When you're in there, you're like, oh, shit. They lied to me.

What do you mean by they lied? There was this – I mentioned Anthony Johnson. So Phil Davis is like – I'm a huge fan of Phil Davis. I love Phil Davis. Me too. He was fighting Anthony Johnson, and he went for that first takedown. And you go back and you look. The look on his face when he fails that takedown is like like this is not what i was told it was going to be and maybe somebody lied to me sounds

like a funny way to say it right but this is not how it was supposed to go right this is not he holy fuck uh anthony johnson someone said he i was going to be able to take him down i can't and that look on his face like that changes everything the whole fight now from this moment that this big dude stopped my takedown shook it it off, and kind of looked at me, now the whole fight is nothing like I had laid it out. Yeah. Yeah, I think if Dominic—I think when you watch the TJ fight, like, the big moments that TJ had, I think what Dwayne was trying to get him to do more was not load up and that he was really trying to knock Dominic out. I mean, that's really what he wanted to do.

I think maybe if he just concentrated more on the leg kicks. I mean, he had that one leg where it turned out that Dominic had had like a serious injury with his foot, like plantar fasciitis. I've had that. Have you? What is it like? Oh, God. So I actually had it after a fight.

My last fight was my best performance ever, and it went great. And that fight, training going up to it, the guy was a very good striker compared to me. And he thought I was going to take him down. He assumed we knew that he knew that was what I was going to do. Only that wasn't what I was going to do. Only that wasn't what I was going to do. I was going to put him against the cage and hold him there and beat him up there until he got tired and I could find a way. But we were not planning to take him down.

We were planning to put him against the cage. But all that leverage, like all that driving off the foot against the cage, it hurt my foot. And then we went, my wife and I went on vacation right after. And we walked nonstop the first day that we were there, just nonstop. And the next day, the fasciitis happened, and it feels literally like you can't even put weight on your foot. It's so inflamed, and you don't know what it is.

Did you damage it? Is it just hurt? And it hurt for months and months and months and months after. And just yoga actually helped it. Really? Yeah, strengthening the foot and the ankle. Yeah, yoga's one of the things that I found when I started getting into it

was how much my feet hurt. Yeah? Yeah, because I was like, my feet are weak, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Because you're big, and your feet and ankles are designed to do the stuff that you do to them.

Yeah. And now you're asking them to do all this other stuff. I was surprised, because I felt like, well, I do so much barefoot. I lift weights barefoot. I kick the bag. Everything's barefoot. I was like, this is not going to be hard to just stand on my feet and hold poses. But it's pretty hard. For like the first couple months, I would have like some serious foot pain in certain

positions. And then now they're stronger. Yeah, now it's much better. But still, that's probably my weakest part is my balance, like balancing my foot there. I saw when you had Carlos and his movement guy on here, and that was one of the things they talked about. It's one of the things Ido Portal talks about, too, is that one of the biggest weaknesses in our whole chain for most of us is our feet and our ankles. That's Nick Curzon's number one thing. When I said, what's the number one thing that you like to work on with fighters is, like, foot strength. Wow. It's, like, the number one thing that guys have that they need to they

need to improve well mine just fully inflamed for a long time after that fight and just mistreatment and they were already so what do you do for that i literally i was in mexico and i would have to like sit against lean on my wife to get to the bar to drink some tequila so that it would hurt a little less so i could get to the pool where it didn't hurt as much because you had water boiling you so were you like taking painkillers anti-inflammatory no painkillers since the last no opiates but like advil or anything yeah advil i literally couldn't walk for three days like i i'm not joking i would lean on her to get to the bar to have some tequila so that we could sit and sit. So it is the fascia on the bottom of the foot that separates?

Is that what it is? Yeah, it separates or inflames. We got it. We got it. The plantar fascia. Yeah, and I guess it affects people in different ways. If it shortens, it gets hard and it shortens that hurts your foot in other ways it's just a weird kind of spot we're walking on that all day all

the time climbing and fighting and running and whatever things we do and that thing right there is on the bottom i mean you got to figure that's going to take some abuse in your life they also say a big issue is shoes the way the the padding that we have on shoes the extra like the runner's padding and that you're really supposed to have like the most minimal amount of protection from the environment as possible just a thin minimalist type of a shoe then that allows us to use our feet the thing we got it's just a big lump on it you know so you don't get to use it but when when you train taekwondo growing up like martial arts for kids like kids and teenagers and stuff man

it's just gonna to make everything better. Well, definitely flexibility. Yeah. I'm still really flexible at 48. I mean, it's because I never stopped doing it, but it's also because I started doing it before my body grew up. Right. Yeah. But what they're saying now is that like Navy SEALs that are learning, they're going through training and everything with those toe shoes.

Yeah. They're trying to stop them from wearing those toe shoes because so many guys, their feet are not strong enough to run and do all these exercises in those things because they're used to wearing like your basic running shoe with the thick heel. And if you ever, people are listening to this, I think there's a TED talk about it where they went over how someone had created one of those running shoes with the thick heel area. And what it had done is really essentially changed the way people run. It changed their gait.

Yeah. And it made people run heel first, which is totally unnatural. You're supposed to run, like, ball the foot first, and your foot's supposed to absorb the energy. And when you do that, you know, your foot acts as sort of like a spring, and it slows you down, it decelerates you, and that's how you're supposed to run. You push off that, and you run with that. If you do that, your foot will be very strong, and you could run long distances, and your foot will stay healthy.

But if you're used to using those running shoes with the big heel, you go heel down first, you don't have that strength in your foot, and you can get really fucking injured if you try to do the same amount of miles and the same intense workout with like a toe shoe or something like that because your feet are just not designed for it yet or you know conditioned for it rather the funny thing like when you know they're telling them not to use these shoes because their feet aren't strong enough yeah but if they use the shoes their feet will become strong enough you know but they want them to go through some pretty fucking grueling rigorous soul searching you know workouts um and we talked about i was hurt i did yoga it fixed it you did yoga it hurt now it's better like you

have to go through a certain amount of hurt you have to go through a certain amount of you know challenge to repair it you know but it's it strikes me so strange when you think about some things that we that humans do something as small or big as going well we're going to wear these shoes changes everything not only how we are our future the way like these little things that we do as as people you don't you never you're never able to project the good and the bad outcomes of them in the future. You just have to deal with them when they happen. Yeah, I'm a big fan when it comes to minimalist footwear. I'm a big fan of wearing real...

I work out with either barefoot or these... I have these new balances. They're just like a slipper. Yeah, I have the exact same ones. They're black, but they're like this little thin thing. Well, I wear the toe shoes, but goddamn, people give you a hard time with the toe shoes. Yeah, me too. They're so brutal. I have those new balance ones i do still do a lot of power lifting i love power lifting i just love it yeah i i try to do yoga and martial arts and and offset but i love

heavy lifting and deadlifts you can't use padding you're gonna lose force you know you have to use i use uh nikes usually or i'll use the new balance ones, but not Nikes rather, Converse, All-Star, like these things, the Chucks. These are my favorite because they're just flat. They're flat and they're very thin. You can kind of feel – they're real flexible. If you climb something with these things, they bend and give. It's not like a rigid thing. Have you ever done a powerlifting meet?

A meet? Yeah. It's super fun, man. What do you do? You compete? Yeah, you go and compete. You compete in powerlifting? Yeah.

Do you? I won the nationals at my age in weight. Holy shit. I trained at this place. What do you lift in? How much do you lift in? I would weigh about 155 and I'll deadlift maybe like 360. Jesus, that's a lot of weight.

And then my bench is maybe 230, 240, which doesn't sound like a lot of weight to people who go to the gym and just throw it around. For 155, that's a lot of weight. But a powerlifting, like a regulation bench press, you bring it down, it's got to stop all movement and you wait for the command to push. How long do you wait? Until all movement is stopped. It might be one second, could be two, could be three. And then they say go. They say press.

So you can't bounce it off your chest. Stop all movement and press from that spot. But I train at this place. I love it. I just love it. And in Toronto, my wife comes now, too. And I brought her at first because she always wanted me to cancel. Because I would come in the morning, she's like, why don't we just go get breakfast?

Why do you have to go to the gym tomorrow? So then I just started. Oh, she's one of those names. Yeah. She's cool, man. She's a temptress. She's a temptress. She's super cool.

But I was just like, she's always like, oh, just skip one. So I got her going. Now she loves it, too. But tons of women power lift now. Really? Yeah. And it shouldn't be the only thing that you do. Because weightlifting, you mentioned it, you lifted weights all your life.

And all of a sudden you did yoga and it added so much. But if you're lifting weights and doing movement and doing yoga and doing flexibility stuff, but that's hard to do. Yeah. Because that goes right back to what we said. You got to work out. You got to eat good. And you got to to sleep or else you won't have a good life Well, how do I have most people don't have the time to do all the different things you would need to do

So one of the most frustrating things about people to get into jiu-jitsu is they just do jiu-jitsu And I'm always like man you really should lift some weights Especially if you're getting older like it's one of the most important things to preserve the joints, like keeping muscle tissue strong and healthy and making sure that you've got good muscle density that protect those joints because you're engaging in a form of combat on a regular basis, and you're doing no strengthening other than that combat. So people, when you go to the gym you see them wait I guys and they're

standing around and moving and stuff that jiu-jitsu guys are sitting around chatting right so that mood makes you feel like it's not combat and then you do jiu-jitsu and it's fucking fighting you know as it's physically fighting your joints are fighting and I think the mood of it makes it feel like I you know it's a bit of a stoner sport in some ways. Guys just chill out and they're wearing their pajamas, hanging out, but it's fighting. Yeah. If you're getting caught in things, you know, just trying to fight out of them or trying to not tap, you put tremendous amount of pressure on your joints, tremendous amount of pressure on

your neck, on your back, always a lot of pressure on your back to try to get out of situations. You're contorting yourself often. And you really need to be strong in those areas. And flexible. Flexible is a big one. It's very important. The first time I met Eddie, I took his seminar. And Eddie's got a room full of people.

And I think I maybe had heard him say this before in a video or something. And people are stretching. And he says, you've got to work on that. And somebody said, well, this is as flexible as I am. And he's like, that is a very North American line of thinking. No other place would people go, this is as flexible as I am. They'd say, this is as flexible as I am right now. If I work at it, I will become more flexible, like everything in life.

But for some reason, we have these limiting beliefs. It's like, do you know how to play piano? No. No, but you could learn how to play piano if it was important to you. Yeah, my fingers work. Yeah, and in six weeks, you'd be a better piano player than you are today. And in three years, you'd be a way better piano player. That's true of every single thing in life.

And one of the reasons, I learned stuff from studying fighters. I learned stuff about life, lots of stuff. But one of those big ones is that growth mindset, the idea that if we put in time on anything, it'll get better. And the work itself is the point. That thing, if a kid has that, their whole life is better. And we can have it at 40 or 50 or at 60. The idea that whatever i am is not what i am it's what i am today but i can improve those things i love that that's a great attitude that's a great way to say it whatever i am is what i am today yeah it's like i mean

people i talk about this guy i like this little thing this thing's pretty cool yeah uh i talk about that guy a lot um and people we were talking about people hating sometimes people that they see on tv some people hate this guy of course they hate connor he talks a lot of shit he's super successful yeah for sure exactly exactly that's you put it perfectly um but the thing that guy has is that insane growth mindset like, to him, anything is possible. I believe anything is possible, but if you win the 155 belt, okay, you go fight Robbie. Okay, if you won that, what are you going to fight? Rockhold?

And then, you know, Jon Jones? There are limits. You know what I mean? There are fucking limits. But he actually believes there are none. And that belief, he's better at everything than he was yesterday. And he's waiting until Rockhold kicks him. You realize there's a difference.

There's mass. That's what I'm saying. There's got to be a point. But that belief that there is no point, that belief that there is no limit whatsoever, is incredibly powerful when it's put together with a drive of a work ethic, with an insane work ethic. That is a powerful thing. Well, it's interesting, too, because with fighters, when they're in camp, most of the time you're preparing for a specific opponent. You're not really picking up new skills.

The way they really pick up skills is by training and taking chances and going outside their comfort zone, which is really not something you want to do while you're conditioning yourself for a fight. So a lot of times when guys are going back to back to back and they're fighting a lot, they're not really improving much. What they're doing is just they're improving their ability to compete because they're getting more comfortable because they're competing a lot. They're getting relaxed. They're in great shape.

And they're getting used to the feeling of being in competition. But, man, there's not a lot of time to take some time to just go over new stuff, to learn new things, to add new weapons. Well, when I talked to him and his coach, Kavanaugh, who I only spoke to briefly, I actually tried to contact him to ask him if I could pick his mind a bit before doing this breakdown. I took it as a big compliment that he's like, no, no, I'll maybe chat with you after. Like that if he gave me something, I might pass it on. I took it as a compliment. And I do a podcast, The Mentality of Combat Sports, and I do it with my very

good friend, David Mullins. Is it on iTunes? No, it is or will be. We're not super on top of that. How long have you been doing it? We've been doing it for a year. What the fuck? It's on iTunes, man. It's on YouTube. Oh, okay. It's on YouTube. Oh, okay. It's on YouTube.

It's on YouTube, yeah. But it either has been on iTunes for a few months or it's in the process. We got a guy who does that. And I've been doing it with him, and he is part of the SBG team. He's the— Straight blast gym. Yeah. The combat—the sports psychology coach of the team.

Oh, interesting. And when I ask him about Connor, and we're very good friends, but when I ask him about Connor, he says Connor is his own coach. But I know at the same time, when you work with the coach, he's his own mental coach. He's on his own journey. And not that he doesn't want information from David, but he wants it from 50 sources. He's consuming philosophy and ideas of how to improve and ideas of what it is to be your authentic self, peak performance, all that kind of stuff. He's constantly consuming it. But my inside info that I get from David working with him, he's like, they don't train for really for an opponent ever, really. The opponent is – he's not a person.

He is a collection of skills and attributes and a body type. And that's it. And we're training to get better every day. The goal is to be better, not to train. And why is that a good thing? Among the millions of reasons, Jose Aldo's out, Chad Mendes is in. If you spent all that time training for Jose Aldo and only Jose Aldo, oh my God, Chad Mendes is in, questions, doubts, concerns, what are we doing, game plan.

Instead, he was like, it doesn't matter who it is. Wow. And they train to get better every single day in everything. Wow. That's a great mindset if you can pull it off. He's pulling it off. He's pulling it off. He is pulling it off right now. I wonder how much of what he's doing, what he's able to do, is his own unique physical gifts.

The fact that he's been so successful so far with this strategy. And also the people that he's training with. He's got fantastic training partners, great grappling with Gunnar Nelson, great coaching. I wonder if that is the way to do it. Because I wonder, is there going to come a time where he faces another guy like him? Like a guy that on that level, and maybe it's Rafael Dos Anjos. Maybe it is. I just sent the breakdown in.

And Craig at the UFC said it's good to go so they'll release it when their digital department does stuff so it's coming out in the next day your breakdowns are fucking awesome man i really really love them i love doing them this one eight to ten days but that's of work on it the ideas came over the last years like just but how long is the piece it's four minutes let's play it can we play no we can't play it I know I've already thanked you but thank you for making that happen oh please my pleasure man like when you recommended my stuff to Dana I flew down to the office with him and Craig, and Dana and I were literally standing up acting out stuff

while we were talking. It was really, really, really exciting and cool. And it is cool to be doing that for the UFC. Oh, it's awesome to have you, man. Yeah, I'm really excited. Yeah, well, when you first started doing it and we became friends and I would watch your stuff, I just immediately was saying,

this guy should be doing this for the UFC. I mean, your stuff is awesome. Thank you. You put so much thought into it. There's so much. And you can get so much out of it as a fan. As someone who's like, look, this fight is goddamn epic. This Conor McGregor, Rafael Dos Anjos fight is an epic super fight.

It's two champions in their prime. One of them coming off of a stunning 13-second knockout to win the title the other one coming off of a brutal beatdown of one of the most popular contenders I mean dos Anjos looks like a goddamn murderer and Connor looks like a freak He does he's like just these two guys. It's perfect. It's the perfect fight So to get some technical insight and to get a view into what your thoughts are on footwork and movement and what Dos Anjos could possibly do to mitigate some of that footwork. What's going to happen if Conor gets on his back the way Mendes got him on his back? Because Dos Anjos is a lot bigger, a lot stronger, and dangerous as fuck with his submissions. Yeah, Chad's never really submitted people.

That guillotine, but Conor used that threat to get up. Chad was two weeks in for that fight. Plus all the media obligations. There's no way a guy who's got a wrestling-heavy strategy like Chad does, you're not going to be conditioned enough to go five rounds with two weeks. He had to knock him out. And so he went in

hard and early. He pushed all his chips in. Conor's got a chin that's made out of some fucking the same shit that Wolverine's bones are made out of. Adamantium. Oh my god. I've never seen anybody take a Chad Mendes punch to the face like that. And he's he was getting hit with

the right hand quite a lot. He was getting hit with it. Whether or not now, I mean Dos Anjos is a southpaw too, so it changes things. And he has he knocked out Poirier who was a southpaw and I think Brandau is a southpaw too. So changes things and he has he knocked out Poirier who was a southpaw and I think Brandau is a southpaw too so he has

dealt with him but on the other hand Dos Anjos took out Ben Henderson who's a southpaw Pettis switches Jason High was a southpaw

like he's faced plenty of them he's a beast it's interesting but breaking that stuff down when I looked at it so

my real goal is to make to try to influence the way people watch fighting and to make them see it the way that I see it. That's the actual goal. The goal is that I see this crazy, unbelievable stuff happening underneath some of the surface. And I want to entertain people long enough that I can trick them into learning some of it. And that's the plan. Trick them into learning. That's funny. You just want to entertain them, make sure they're having a good time. And at the end of it, they are walking around going, yeah. And by the way, that kick works this way. And they do. And cause if you go and you just stand there and you

like have a diagram and you know, I think that was, there was always outside of like people were learning fighting from your commentary and then there wouldn't be another show. So then they'd have to come back and they'd learn during the fights, which is great. I mean, that was your you did more to educate people about fighting than any person ever, probably. I mean, I can't think off the top of my head anybody who has contributed more knowledge of fighting. And it was done. You're entertaining. You're having fun. They love your voice. And it was done. You're entertaining. You're having fun.

They love your voice. So that was the learning. But then there's not another fight now for a few weeks. We should learn some shit in the meantime. And we should get you prepared so you don't have to teach them everything about this fight in the fight while calling the fight

and making sure it's entertaining. We've got to get you prepped with some knowledge. Well, there's never been a time like this before where you could get so many different breakdowns, like the Gracie breakdowns of submissions that Henner and Heron do, Lawrence Kenshin stuff, Jack Slack stuff. There's so much good stuff. Who was the guy that Kenny was plagiarizing? Yeah, I forget his name off the top of my head.

That was a weird situation. Did you talk about that much? Because you were a guy who, when that happened in comedy, you were not having that. No, not really. But it wasn't good. You know, what Kenny's take on it is that Kenny, he writes a lot of notes, and he's been writing notes for years and years, and that's what happened. He just failed to attribute, which, you know, may be the case. I don't know.

But I like the fact that we found out, though. Lee Wiley, that's right. Yeah, he does great stuff. There's a lot of really good people. The Willie Pepp video. That's right. That was excellent. Yeah, it was very good.

There's a lot. And when I started to do analysis, there wasn't a lot. And I was hoping now, just like when you started doing a podcast, have you had hundreds of people say, oh, I started a podcast? Yeah. And just like, I get guys emailing me, hey like when you started doing a podcast, have you had hundreds of people say, oh, I started a podcast? Yeah. And just like I get guys emailing me, hey, I'm doing analysis. And I think – and I wasn't the guy who started it. I can't take any credit for that.

But when people did it excitedly, people were like, oh, shit, fighting is way more interesting than just – I mean the real thing that kind of would bother me is there wasn't, you know, a fight would happen. This awesome stuff would happen. Crazy things that had, you know, changed the way that you understood how people moved and what happened when trained athletes fought each other. And it meant something to the next time that you'd fight, the way they move, all that stuff. And people would be like, all right, he got it done at two minutes of the fifth, two minutes of the third round. What's next for this guy? Which is, that's a great conversation too. Or what does this mean for the title rankings?

Or, you know, who are you going to call out? It was instantly looking ahead. Fighting immediately was like, well, what's the next fight and how's it going to go down? No amount of like, what does it mean? What happened? I mean, we're taking human beings at the highest level of training and in a global experiment to figure out what is the ultimate way that human beings can do combat. And we're putting them there at personal risk to themselves for our entertainment. And brilliant shit happens.

We can't just move on. We can't just go, oh, well, you know, Johnny won or GSP won or whatever. Well, what's his next fight? We got to honor that fight. We got to honor the fact that these guys are giving that stuff. Well, I think we both agree that the fighters of today are the greatest fighters ever. And the audience is far more knowledgeable today than they've ever been before. So when we're watching all these breakdowns and all these different technique videos,

you have so much more access to mixed martial arts knowledge it's it's an incredible like you ever follow any of those uh bjj uh video um uh ones on instagram yeah like viral bjj holy shit man yeah some of those fucking moves like i've never seen those i've been doing jujitsu for 22 years i've never seen some of those moves crazy it's incredible some some of these guys have like some sick fucking transitions, man. Amazing stuff. Yeah. Jujitsu is a whole other fascinating world of its own right now.

But yeah, I just love now that it's like it isn't just the outcome or the storyline around it or the shit talking. It's techniques. People are interested in the fight, like the thing that's happening when these geniuses are actually moving that just makes me i'm glad that's happening i'm so glad that's happening you know and because that happens in other sports too eventually at first just got to see home runs man we're just gonna sit around until the home runs happen or like what if in football people who love football didn't understand they were just bored out of their tree booing when they ran the football one yard.

And they only cheered when it was like a long bomb. You know? That's what happened to some degree in fighting. Guys would be against the fence or guys would be grappling and people would be like, oh, when is the fighting going to happen? We still see that. Yeah, we do. We still see that. I mean, especially when we go to like

different markets outside of Vegas and the audience is not that educated. They start booing when it goes to the ground. Yeah. Crazy. It sucks. I commentated Taekwondo for the Pan Am Games. Really?

Yeah. And I commentated like eight, maybe more like 10 or 12 traditional martial arts in Russia for the World Combat Games. Wow. And it's super cool. And seeing that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is moving the way that those sports moved in a lot of ways. Like, Taekwondo was awesome, commentating that. And the Mexican team won almost all the medals. Really?

Yeah. Interesting. Because you can punch, as we all know. But we don't do it because our coaches and the way that we've taught and the way we've celebrated the spinning and beautiful techniques, that's what we're doing. That space in between you and me being able to kick each other from here, the Mexican team entered that space, took it away, and punched you in the body. So they were throwing like body punches. Body punches, one on one. Boxing style body punches.

That's interesting. It's like the sport itself kind of agrees to do Taekwondo. And that happens in every sport. And in Jiu Jitsu now, I love Jiu Jitsu. But sport Jiu Jitsu isn't really fighting anymore. All this Barambolo and all these interesting stuff. They're beautiful. It's fascinating.

It's an amazing sport. beautiful it's fascinating it's an amazing sport but if we are in an environment where we are going to sort of unconsciously agree that these are the structures and rules we have the sport changes as soon as you remove punching like a lot of these things certain defenses to things is punch so once we remove that you get this beautiful cool sport but it moves further away from fighting the same way every other martial art did well it can, but it also doesn't have to. Like one of the things I really love about what John Donahue is doing with Eddie Cummins and Gary Tonin and these assassins that he's got out of Henzo's in New York is they're figuring out a way to use these leg lock transitions in a way that it's not dangerous to do.

Like you would always, the traditional thought was when a guy goes for a leg, and if you do it improperly, it is the truth. You're committing two arms to the leg and you're not going to be able to defend against punches. We saw that with Frank Mir versus Ian the Machine Freeman.

Remember that fight? Yeah, yeah. Frank was going for that heel hook and Ian just kept punching him in the fucking face and he stopped him while he wasn't tapping and he was just slamming him in the face

when you alan belcher when he was fighting what's his name paul harris yeah paul harris yeah you don't see that anymore um with the the highest level jujitsu guys they put they're putting themselves in a position first of all when a guy like gary tonin or eddie cummings grabs a hold of your leg you have fractions of a second before your knee explodes. And so the transitions and the technique is so tight, you don't have that space to swing wild punches. They're not giving it to you. They are putting you in a very, very dangerous spot immediately. And it's the technique and the thought process behind it,

and whether it's perfected by Donaher or a bunch of other people. I know Dean Lister was initially a part of that as well. He taught those guys a lot, and he was one of the early leg lock masters. But these guys, they're doing it in a way where these techniques that I might have agreed with you just a few years ago really aren't for MMA, like the 50-50 and stuff like that. You're seeing those really apply to MMA now. Yeah. The cool thing about fighting, like everything is cool, you know, but a another and a long list of cool things is it's how the money that exists.

Like when we talk about why the UFC is a great thing, I think the UFC is an awesome thing. It when you monetize something more study and things happen to it. As soon as you say you can become wealthy if you get good at this, gyms and businesses and things can pop up around it, it speeds the evolution of how things happen. doing fighting, guys like Donaher will arc back with their study of the martial art back to where they get paid, which is fighting, which is the UFC. Well, it's interesting because you need a guy like a Donaher. You need one of those genius guys to just try to figure out what's the best way to approach this. Where are the problems?

Well, the problems keep happening when you're going into the transition and the guy grabs this leg. Okay, how do we stop that? Well, let's look at it backwards. Let's attack it from this side. Now we're going to attack it this way. So many times when guys would go for an arm bar from side control, you'd be in side control or you'd be in a mount. You'd grab an arm. You'd swing over, and you'd go, and you'd commit to that arm.

And then the legs would fly over for the defense Right. Well Eddie Bravo was one of the first guys to say well, let's not Let's not hook it with the right arm So if you're going for someone's right arm and you turn to arm bar them don't hook it with your right arm Hook it with the left and grab their leg Yeah with your other arm and then commit to it that way because this way you've stopped the defense and you've got a much more secure set of offense. One of the reasons why people were going for it in the first place was because of the gi. Now the gi is a really interesting thing because I think the gi is very good defensively,

and I think defensively it's one of the best tools to make sure that you're using proper technique because you can't just explode out of things. You have to use the right position. You have to understand where you're in danger, where you're not in danger. However, when it comes to attacking, the gi gives you so many more handles and so many more options that I think it's false security. And I think you're way better off not using it to attack. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's a whole other part of the sport too. It's like you roll with these gi guys and and they're, like, sneaking this thing out. And you're like, oh, shit, what is he doing? And now, never mind the fact that that's going to work. Just introducing that threat, and you're like, oh, wait, what's happening there? Now my brain isn't mindful where it's supposed to be. It's worried about this, which might be nothing.

He's just pulling a piece of a Gi. It is fascinating. Any kind of combat, any way that you put two people trying to best each other, it's going to be absolutely fascinating. The geek guys are doing some weird shit, man, where they're like taking their jacket off and wrapping it around your head and strangling you with it. Makes sense, though, if we're really going to use this thing, if it's going to be in there. But fighting, too, it's like even how jiu-jitsu is used in fighting changes so much in such interesting ways, in ways that we've now seen happen over and over so many times that you can predict their future again. Like, you know, the one example that I always kind of use is, you know, I'm in your guard, so I do a can opener, and then your guard opens. And then you discover, hey, wait a second, I'll arm bar that.

And you arm bar me, so I'm in your guard, can opener opens your guard. Wait a second. You armbar me. No more can openers. That doesn't make any fucking sense. Danaher later goes, George, we're going to can open Condit. But Danaher, what? I don't do a good French accent. But what about the armbar? We're going to can open him and shut down the armbar. We don't stop can opening because there's an armbar there. We just solve the problem. And that kind of adjustment, you see it now in the guard. It blows my mind that in gyms everywhere, very smart coaches, they're like, the guard is dead. We don't submit from the guard anymore. We use the guard.

Watch Brian Ortega. Yeah, fuck. There's lots of good guys. Ortega's a monster. Jesus Christ. But think of the implications of that. This is where I see the crazy aspect of it, because we've seen this a million times. So, all right, guys, we're not going to submit from guard. Our use, when we are in guard, we're going to use it to get an underhook, threaten one of these three things, and heist their hips back out,

and we're going to stand up. We're going to work on our stand-up more. and from here, we're going to get back up. Okay, coach, that's great. So now for the next year and a half, your job on top of me becomes hold me down, stop my stand-up, and hit me. And my job becomes fight you to get back up. That happens for three months, six months, two years. That becomes the game. You hold me down and beat me up and I try to get back to my feet. Your game on top hasn't even involved the real threat of submissions for two fucking years because all your training partners are just standing up. So you're getting weaker at dealing with submission threats because you never see them anymore. Your training partners don't do them.

Somewhere in Eddie's gym, you got Ben Saunders and guys, they're working on it. Not only are they getting better at it, you're getting worse at it. As time goes on, you're getting worse at it. Inevitably, all of a sudden, it's like the guard's back in play. Holy shit, everybody's submitting guys off their back. Why? He got better, but you got worse.

The mindset of how to train that thing in the gym every day removed a very real threat because your training partners don't even throw it at you anymore. And that thing changes, you know? Yeah. You see that also with wrestlers that don't wrestle much anymore because they're working on their striking and they kind of put the wrestling aside and then they get out wrestled and you realize like that's something you got to stay on top of. You got to keep sharpening it. Yeah. There's just so many different variables in MMA. It's one of the reasons why it's such an amazing sport.

There's so many different ways to go about it. You can just decide to Damian Maya it. Close the distance, kick guys to the ground, use your superior jiu-jitsu, submit guys and look like a wizard. Or you can Wonderboy it, where you're just standing up. Boy, there's an interesting fight right there. Damian Maya and Wonderboy. That is a very fucking interesting fight if that ever happens

you know for Ram Dean and I as my partner you met him at your show we commentate a bunch of really old fights and it's really cool

oh that's nice old pancreas we just did a couple of condits old fights against I can't remember I have an issue membering names

I know it's because I got hit in the head a lot. For real. Or maybe it was like the drugs. Those four days of heroin. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

I literally was thinking of that on the way down here. But old fights and you see how different it was. Like you can spot the things where like now a guy would not do that or he would do this.

Right. But they just didn't know. And that's why I think it's crazy that fighting is so structured in how it's trained now. It's like, let's put it this way. 2000 in 2030, does fighting look different than it does today? Oh, yeah. Then why are we training it like it isn't changing? Like why, if we know that it is ever changing, why are we like digging in deep and saying we got it all figured out.

You got to train your muay thai. You got to train this kind of wrestling. Because someone will come along. That's what taxis did. You know, that's what hotels did. They were like hotels. So this is the way to do it. We're going to build bigger hotels, better hotels.

We'll put pools in them. You know, we'll advertise them differently. And somebody's like, people don't want fucking hotels. Airbnb comes along, ruins hotels. Isn't it really ruining hotels? It's damaging them at the very least. Yeah. I mean, tons and tons of people just don't even consider it anymore.

When I was coming down to L.A. for the weekend, I was looking at how expensive hotels were. I was thinking about it. I don't really want to stay in someone's house I don't know. Yeah, that's kind of weird. Although I have friends who do it all the time and they love it. People have cameras and shit and they're out there catching Pete and all. I never thought of that. But now that that's in my head.

People have been caught. Some woman was suing some man because he had set up hidden cameras that were on in this house. Man, what's wrong with us? We want to see somebody naked. Man, what's wrong with us, you know? We want to see somebody naked. Yeah, well. But the internet's full of naked. There's naked everywhere.

I know, it doesn't matter. People want, they want naughty. Yeah. You know, they want to be able to do things they're not supposed to do. Yeah, I guess. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, for sure. There's something creepy about spying on somebody.

Yeah, it is creepy. You could just go to YouPorn and watch people fuck all day long, but they don't want to. Well, as soon as you think about the fact that somebody's spying on you, that feeling that you get proves that it's creepy. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Well, it's the technology. It's never been available before where someone could remotely watch you in your own home fairly easily. It used to be just know just 10 20 years ago if they wanted to do something like that they had to like set up

some pretty elaborate equipment now these little tiny tiny cameras are so small little gopro or something like that set it up somewhere it can remotely access it they have a bunch of different kinds of cameras they can remotely access sure freaky that each that's outside the point yeah but when you think about any kind of technology you can use it for good you can use it to like advance things you can use it to make things better you can use it for bad and i think there's like a real perspective thing i think with the way that we look at things you know the way that people look at things it's like the perspective that you take is everything. If you look at something, somebody says something to you.

You give all this meaning to it and you assume you know what they mean and then you get mad. You don't have to do that. You can just assign it no meaning at all and have whatever response you want. That kind of perspective is you come across a camera and you go, well, wouldn't this be cool? We can film guys training and we can come up with all these cool things. I can do my job different. Or somebody's like, naked people without their permission. That's what we got to do.

Well, it's just assholes. You're always going to have assholes. We were talking about fighting today versus fighting 30 years from now. Why don't we train like it's going to be 30 years from now? I think one of the problems is we need to see it be successful. Like you need to see a guy like Wonderboy fight where you go, okay, we got to learn some fucking sport karate. We got to figure out how to do that blitz.

We got to figure out how to slide back and throw those kicks the way they're doing it. And I still to this day think we haven't seen the level of traditional martial arts techniques that are, that exist in like a really good Taekwondo match or a really good Kyokushin match. There are guys in these other sports. Yeah. I mean, you've seen some guys like, uh, Moon Tosri who's fighting the UFC, who's a national champion. Yeah. He's bad motherfucker with his kicks. So you seeing him, but you know, he, he's got to learn all that other stuff first. He's got to get, I mean, he had to, rather, learn all that other stuff first, get better at all these other techniques. And, you know, perhaps there's going to be some guys

that are even better or more powerful than him. You know, these traditional techniques, I think, are probably the most underused or the most underappreciated aspects of MMA. I mean, when we saw Anderson front kick Vitor in the face, and it was like the first time we'd ever seen that, we're like, this is crazy that the first kick ever that they teach you is now the new kick.

Yeah. I know you had Boss on earlier, and I didn't get to see it. I love Boss. And he used to say straight up, no jabs. Jabs in fighting are useless. Now, that was a different era. Now he would say something it. I love Boss. And he used to say straight up, no jabs. Jabs in fighting are useless. Now, that was a different era. Now he would say something different, I'm sure. But he was – the people, they were products of eras.

And then that other era, well, we can't front kick. Well, why not? Well, we'll get taken down. No. Well, don't get taken down. Just like that can opener in the arm bar. If you get taken down – or whatever the issue was, but say the issue is getting getting taken down if you get taken down off the front kick it doesn't mean don't front kick it means front kick and figure out how to stop the fact that you're going to get taken down

well you see like the guys who are really good at that front kick it's such a danger like a kyle noak when you want to fight in australia yeah those some i swear some of these guys uh shane campbell's fighting i I think Sunday, yeah. And he's got a few finishes with their toe stabs. And I think some of the ones, I keep pointing at this Connor doll because it looks funny. I think some of the ones he hit Mendes with were toe stabs. Just roll the toes back and drill him in. So you're saying like roll the toes back down instead of pulling them back?

Instead of pulling them back like with the ball of your foot like Taekwondo, make him like a fist. Roll him, and then they stab it into the body. Really? Yeah. An old Thai technique. Yeah. If you Google Shane Campbell toe stab, you'll probably see one of his fights right before he got in the UFC.

But lots, I bet some of them are doing that. Now, the ball of the foot, we can penetrate pretty deep, but when they commit to literally drilling it in and it penetrates in and touches your organs. The thing that gets to me, though, is that I feel like I could kick through a door with the ball of my foot. With my toe, I'm not going to be able to have that kind of impact. So if

you do that toe stab and you hit an elbow, you're kind of fucksville. Well, I guess that's the risk of it. The reason you can do that is you did it since you were a little kid over and over thousands and thousands of times and it is harder and it is safer and it is smarter but if you know that that spot is there i mean all of these things have to be the next answers because with the next answer isn't just do what we're all doing only better. I mean, and it was kind of like, um, uh, who was it? Uh, uh, Matt Hughes is coach. Um, he was, uh, from that. Yeah. Miletic

Miletic and Frank Shamrock. And these guys were like, okay, well you were a wrestler and I was a striker and that's all these things. I just got to get really pretty good at all those things that worked for a while. But now that everybody knows every single choice that you're making in every single position, we're just playing within these rules that we've kind of agreed on. It's got to be some other stuff. It's got to be things that you don't train. It's got to be things you haven't dealt with. It's got to be things your training partners don't show you. That has to be the next answer. It has to always be the next answer yeah I think movement is the big focus right now right with Ito and uh with uh the all these yeah Erwin LaCour um

Nick Curzon focuses a lot on movement a lot of plyometrics and explosion drills and movement drills and I think they're realizing now that what what's the glue in between the techniques is what they're really concentrating on. I think that was a big factor in the Johnny Hendricks-Wonderboy Thompson fight. For sure. Was the movement. The movement and the fact that Hendricks is so much more stationary. He just really wasn't able to close those distances or get out of the way. Didn't have that kind of footwork.

And his game was just so dependent upon close range fighting yeah he said uh you know i kind of hoped he would trade in the pocket with me more why the fuck would he do that he shouldn't do that he should definitely not do that i feel like i should have said i kind of hoped he would fall down yeah i i um i feel like i know why mcgregor started doing that that movement training i could be wrong mean, I hopefully get the chance to ask him. But remember last time that I was here, we talked about that flow state, you know, when you achieve that flow state. The best guys are fighting that 100%. And that state of freedom, right? And Condit was one of the first guys I really spotted that kind of did that earlier before we chatted about it last time. And so you're seeing that a lot. When you're in a true flow state, you are free, innovative,

able to do things you weren't aware of, fully present in the moment. There's all of these things. It's about sort of true freedom. I think he believed that his body, he was, his mind and the thing, his goals were freer than his body was allowing him to be. That if he was truly mentally free to fight, that the thing that was stopping him was his physical movement limitations. And I really believe that's why he went and pursued that kind of open movement. Because we're not going to become any freer than in a peak performance state. So we have to free up our body if we're going to go further with this well it makes sense if you look at what people well george saint pierre in a lot of ways was ahead of the curve with this because of his gymnastics approach but really the

originator of this shit is is hickson if you go back and watch hickson when hickson was into the movement uh was gymnastic unnatural he was into a lot of crazy yoga things, a lot of flexibility and balance things. He was into that way, way before anybody was. Bruce Lee was into building the body to do martial arts, too, in whatever ways you can figure. You were just saying it half an hour ago, or I don't know how long it's been, that you tell jujitsu guys you've got to get strong. You identified that. Hickson identified that all that long ago. He's like, okay, we figured out how we're going to move it.

Now what can I do with my body to enhance that or take that further? Eddie with his flexibility stuff. Well, Hickson was always the best out of all the Gracies. He's widely regarded as the greatest jujitsu artist ever. So if you look at Hickson in comparison to all the other ones, like Hoyce when he was fighting, what was so impressive about Hoyce was that he wasn't a specimen. And he was just a regular guy who was in shape, obviously,

but had really good technique. What Hickson is is that really good technique with a freak athletic body. You know, a guy who can stand on a balance beam and do a full split holding onto his heel. I mean, he's really freakish in his ability to move his body. And physical strength was a huge factor in his ability as well. So if you look at Hickson in the old days in comparison to the other guys, you're seeing a much more physically robust guy, much stronger. And because of that, he was able to overcome.

Like if you get two guys guys they both have equal technique But one guy is much stronger that guy's gonna dominate. Yeah, and that's just the way it is You know technique is hugely important. It's probably the most important thing But once that's covered physical strength is a huge attribute huge So then the physical strength becomes equal now So then I work that up then it it becomes flexibility and movement. And when that's equal, it's just our minds. Like who's going to win this? Be more creative.

Be more creative. Who's more in the zone? Who's more loose? Who can pull the trigger easier? Psychological training. It's a huge factor. Huge. A lot of guys are getting into hypnosis now.

I got hypnotized. Vinny Shorman hypnotized me. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Here. I wanted to see what it was like. He came and did the podcast and he was, he'd been training.

He's trained a bunch of guys. He works with Joe Schilling and a bunch of different kickboxers and Muay Thai guys. And I just want to know what it was all about. And what was it like? It's legit, man. It's legit. You know, I was like, okay, what is, what is hypnosis? Is it bullshit?

Did you try to fight it? No. No. No, I didn't want to do that. I wanted to just, I wanted him to hypnotize me see what it's like you definitely go into a state you definitely go into some strange state of consciousness i wouldn't say you're asleep because uh i was i heard him talking you know i remember i remember hearing vinny's voice but i was most certainly hypnotized i was definitely there definitely there. And it's like you're going into almost like a drug-induced.

It feels real weird. That's what I felt like for four days. I don't think it's quite that bad. No. But it's a very strange state. It's very difficult to describe it and compare it to something else because I don't think I've ever experienced anything like it other than maybe a state that you get into sometimes when you're doing like a sensory deprivation tank or I guess you would do if you were doing like heavy meditation. You get into some weird alternative state of consciousness.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. A lot of guys do visualizing training, but with a – I don't know if – a lot of the coaches wouldn't call themselves a hypnotist, but they lead it. So they lead you through. You've got your eyes closed. And David does it with some of the SPG guys and other people. And he says as you're getting them to go through and visualize it, you see them moving. You see them sweating.

They are experiencing the fight in their mind. They are visualizing everything. And it's probably very similar. But you lead you through it. And at the end, they feel tired. They feel mentally tired. They've done it. And that idea that you visualize,

I mean, if we do something, our brain is doing it. So if we don't physically do it, but our brain does it, you definitely get huge, real, true value from that. Well, it's been proven. It's been proven that people can improve as much through visualization as they can from actual physical movement is as long as you actually commit to it.

And, you know, don't be all fucking weird and like half-ass it. And, you know, you have to think of it as if you're doing it. And if you can think of it as if you're doing it, your mind will take those same pathways. I know that guys have learned new jujitsu techniques that way. Like you, you visualize yourself pulling them off. And then when you're training, they just, they just come, they just come to you. So wild. That just shows you what your brain can do and why it is the most important part. I mean, by the time we've learned how to do everything, we're going to fight and you're walking down there. And if you haven't prepared mentally, everything else was a waste of time.

If you can't go in there and be in an optimum state, free of the worrying about the consequences. Oh, man, I need my win bonus or what if I lose this fight? You can't have any of that. You have to be truly free to perform. And guys will spend years training the physicality and the technical stuff and then not have a plan for that when cruz said that um you know ring rust or octagon shock or whatever is yeah rust is not real i 100 believe that i 100 agree with him it's real if you think it's real right it's not real if it's not real to you. But the way it became not real to him is he prepared for it. This is the second time I'm

in this room. I'm more comfortable in it than I was last time. Jamie and you are way more comfortable than Brendan Schaub, who's more comfortable than me. Do you know why? Because it's the environment. And BJ Penn used to go and train for a fight and he'd have a ref and a fake ring announcer and an audience and the walkout. And he would create all of that before he fought. So that stuff wasn't new. Because the first fucking time you're standing in there and Bruce Buffer is doing that crazy shit at you. If you haven't prepared for that, the next thing you know, you either wake up or you somehow won, but you really don't

remember anything. You're looking at him, it's like, that can't be the first time that you've looked at Bruce Buffer. It has to have been in your mind 30 times. It's like, right, this is where I belong. I'm supposed to be here. I belong here. I earned my way here. Fucking right, Bruce Buffer's introducing me because the whole

world's going to see how fucking good I am. You can't be like, oh shit, when you see the UFC. There's Joe Rogan over there. It's like, yeah, you can't. That can't be new. That has to have happened dozens or hundreds of times in your mind when you go in there. It's interesting because a lot of these guys, their

mental preparation is just doing it and learning once you've done it. Instead of preparing for it, and then once you're actually doing it, you go you've done it instead of preparing for it. And then once you're actually doing it, you go, this is what I've prepared for. For sure. And even just all the way along, like, we all should learn stuff. That's what I say all the time. Sometimes I'll, like, use an example of something that I do or my friend does or whatever.

And I don't mean to put it back to myself. I'm saying we should all try to do this. You look and you prepare for stuff and you go back and it's the work. It was the work that you did. That's what matters. You're not any, you're just a guy, but you're a guy who worked like crazy,

prepared like crazy, made notes of the things that you did. When you can go back and look at your journal or your notes and see everything you've done in the day or afternoon of that fight, that stuff is fighting. All of your work is fighting. All you got to go in there and have fun. The work's been done.

That's the state you have to be in. And the reason I mentioned, I have a stack of every breakdown I've ever done, all the work, every note, and it's like this high. And I bring that with me. When I went to meet Dana and Craig, I had that in my suitcase when I went down to meet them in Vegas. Because I look at that and it's like, right, I'm supposed to be here. I worked really hard on this stuff. I'm supposed to be talking to these guys.

This is where I'm supposed to be. If I don't have that, you can be like, what should I, what do I, you know, you can't be questioning. You have to look at all the work that you did. And on that walk to the cage, I had terrible performances and I had one or two good ones. And the best one was the last one because I understood what state you were supposed to be in. You couldn't be scared. You couldn't be angry. You couldn't be out to get them. You had to be fucking free. You love martial arts. You love fighting. This is what you wanted to do. You don't have to be here. You get to be here. That's the state you have to be in.

When you do a breakdown, say if you do a breakdown for Conor McGregor and Rafael dos Anjos, how do you begin? What do you do? Do you watch footage? Do you think about what you already know? How do you begin a breakdown? So I got to know what the point is. down. So I got to know what my, the point is. And the point is, like I said, to influence the way people watch fighting in a way that's positive, make them learn stuff. And you hope it influences other people who influence stuff because you want people to take, you want to inject these ideas into the world. So that has to be where you start. If you start from that point, it's not to, I got to earn money or I got to like get clicks, nothing. I want people to see how fucking amazing

this is. So you start from that point. That point could be months in advance. Then there's things that you've been watching and studying and looking at in full immersion. Things like, you know, this movement stuff that we're talking about or comparisons that you make of how people work against the cage and compare to another sport or all these ideas are all floating around you. Hopefully you've got 50 of them. And then the fight comes up and you see, oh, fuck, it's Conor McGregor and Rafael Dos Anjos. That's got to start brewing.

I know I asked Craig, they accepted mine today. So the next one is Jones and Cormier. I'm on that already. What's going on in that fight? Do I look back at their other fight? Do I look at how they do? What is happening? What happened?

What's going to happen? How's it going to happen? And where's the fucking cool in it? So that starts immediately. And then you go, you might have a couple of ideas. You might have some, oh, well, you know, range, man. There's this four ranges kind of thing I've been playing around with. And I did

it in the Ronda one, but they didn't release it as that version. So that sure applies to Jon Jones. So it'll start. I'll start thinking about it in terms of four different ranges and how he manages it. So they edit your versions? No, I sent in multiple versions for that one.

Only because they were like, they didn't know what I did or how I did it or how I work with them or whatever. Actually, it's been super cool. Like I send it in, they're like, wow, it's great and put it out. But the first one, Dana was like, well, can you give me like four minute version, a five minute version, a one minute? I just want for him to wrap his head around it. So the first one that I sent in was many different ones.

And then since then, and they've been fucking super cool. They're just like, hey, I think this guy's good at this. Yeah, go do that thing you do, which is exactly what you hope, right? Oh, yeah, that's what you want, man. But that one, now you sent the multiple, and it was mostly just so they could wrap their head around it. Also, you're working in a company. They've got to figure out, who is this guy?

He talks fast. He seems enthusiastic. Is he smart? Is he easy to work with? How does he take direction? So you've got to figure all that stuff out. But I think they figured it out pretty quick. It's like, oh, yeah, he just likes doing this stuff, and he does a good job.

Well, you're very, very committed to it. And if you were smart and you were running a business, and obviously you're very very committed to it and if you were smart and you're running a business and obviously the ufc is very smart they look at a guy like you they go just tell him to do it he's gonna do it he's gonna do it right yeah you're gonna do it right yeah that's been that's how it's been give you much direction yeah that's that's how it's been um and uh but in that one so yeah so look at it and now i've got, that fight is not for eight weeks. So I'll still do other breakdowns of Fight Network in the meantime. They're a family. I do 40 hours a week of TV there, and I build these around that.

Do you really? You do 40 hours a week? Not of hours. Not of hours of TV, but I'm in there five days a week. We're a 24-hour fight channel. Is that on in America? It's on like xbox and like all those other things those what like roku and all of that kind of stuff and then

it's in the tri-state area and it's in texas like it's in it has it doesn't have national carriage but it's got pockets of carriage and like a no-brainer yeah there's a channel that just had fights on all the time like people would just like, how many times have you been flipping through the channel, bored, looking for something? And you go, well, I'll always go find something on the fight channel. Yeah. And, I mean, in Canada, the timing was pretty good because George was a big star. Right now, in Ireland, fighting is the thing. Oh, my God.

Because Connor's over there. And Canada was like that. And that allowed us to kind of get entrenched in there. But when all day every day is fighting, literally it's like there are times, hey, Robin and John and John go and talk about this news. So I'll do – on a Monday, we'll do five rounds, which is an analysis show. We'll do two or more chats of what's going on in the news. I'll do five rounds today, which is a podcast version, but it's for television. And then on Tuesday, we'll do similar stuff and then call two hours of old vintage Pancrase.

And then the next day, call two hours of Deep out of Japan. So all day, all the time. So for me, this is a fucking amazing thing, right? Because this is my life's work. It's my job and passion and obsession. And I get to do it all day. But I do that and I'm now making these breakdowns. So they have to happen around that.

But all day long, you've got to be ready. If something hits you or you pick up on something or there's a sea change or there's some kind of little movement going on in something, well, I've got a breakdown in six weeks. Maybe I can explore that for that. Then you get excited. The Connor one, I'm can explore that for that. Then you get excited. The Conor one, I'm very interested in this guy. And I look at these guys, Chris Weidman's work ethic, that taught me how to work really hard. I always kind of worked hard, but you look at this guy, okay, that's how winners work. And then McGregor's growth mentality, it's like, okay, that's how I'm going to get better

and better and better. And he's innovating. I got to innovate. If I innovate, you want other people to spread the idea. I want people to rip my stuff off because then they'll rip off what I did a year ago. And then a year from now, I'll do new stuff. Like you want it all to influence how people see fighting because I think fighting is the coolest thing. And if they see it through my eyes, they'll think that too. people see fighting because I think fighting is the coolest thing. And if they see it through my eyes, they'll think that too. You know, but you want, you know, so you, you cop, you learn about innovating from him. You look at what Rhonda's going through and you learn, how do you, how do people deal with that? How would I deal with that? And it just get,

I'm super attached to all of these people and these things and these experiences. And I kind of get to live them out and learn from them. You know, when you look at Connor and Rafael dos Anjos, how are you, how do you think that is going down? There's obviously a bunch of different ways they can interact with each other once the cage door shuts and the fight begins. How do you, how do you perceive it? Well, I go through, fighting gets more and more and more complicated. And then you go through these periods where it gets really, really simple.

And then it gets more and more complicated. And that's kind of the process of my learning. And right now I'm looking at it kind of simply. Obviously, Conor wants to get – Conor has a left hand that knocks people out. So almost everything he kind of built was to put himself in a situations to hit guys with his left hand and knock them unconscious So that's our job. We need to knock you unconscious with this So what are some of the problems that could prevent that from happening? Well, you can get a hold of me. You can push me up against the cage

You can do all these things and what are the ways that I could increase the likelihood of doing that? Well, I can fuck with you that seems to help works for everybody who's good at it But ultimately if dos Anjos puts him on his back, he's in real fucking trouble. He's in real fucking trouble. I agree. This is not kind of a pretty good jiu-jitsu guy. This is a vicious, violent guy who will happily stay on your guard until he caves your face in, until you overreact, and then he'll start passing, then he'll start abusing.

You're in trouble. But at the same time, we can't look at it and go, I must stay off the ground at all costs. Because that infringes on Conor's being Conor. So he has to play the game that Stephen Thompson played. That has to be. That's the game most of these guys are looking to try to do right now. The thing about Dos Anjos, though, he's very fast. He's very good at closing the distance.

I was really shocked in the Pettis fight how quickly he pulled the trigger and how he leaves no space. He leaves no space for you to analyze his movement and prepare to counter. He's on you before you could get that breathing room. The Pettis one is definitely... This was one of the ways I was going to break it down.

When you're looking at it, there starts to be multiple different ways because no thing is one thing. There's 50 things. One of them was Dos Anjos might be looking at this as this is similar to the Pettis fight. And so what would you do different if you were Conor, if your goal, if your job was to beat this guy? Pettis didn't move laterally very much because he's also really good at, and him and Duke and lots of people have been working

on, as you back up, delivering with power. So back up, a lot of it has to do with the stomp of the back foot. Bam! You know? And so they were working on that. This guy is a pressure fighter. As he moves forward, we're going to rip him. We're going to hurt him. We're going to drop him. We're going to discourage him. He's never got it off.

Somewhere, now my orbital bone is broken. My idea of lulling you in and hurting you bad isn't working. The adjustment is we got to start moving laterally. And he never really did that. His orbital in that fight? Yeah, the first round. The first punch, that hard left hand? Yeah.

Wow. Yep. Now, the one, so then we're looking at it where Conor and his people, and they're taking a positive approach to it. What can we exploit? One thing Dos Anjos does really, the only thing that he, if you're looking at it and going, one thing jumps out as less than perfect for this killer champion, and that he really telegraphs his punches. He telegraphs them a lot you see it right you see and when i break things down i'll watch fights in slow motion sometimes dozens of

times and now i'll that's all i see did you see the video that somebody put together it's like an animated gif file of uh aldo chasing after connor connor landing the left hand and then the same exact movement by Dos Anjos chasing after Pettis, or chasing after Donald, rather, but Donald doesn't land the punch. Like, you see very similar movement. He sees, that's what he says, he sees. Now when I look at him, he does, and I actually hate to criticize in any way. I don't feel comfortable with it.

I don't feel qualified to criticize, and that's just a personal thing. I don't think other people shouldn't. I'm looking at 90 to 99th percentile fighters, and I'm some guy who won a couple of fights and was terrible in fights. the fights and was terrible in fights and and i'm you know i just i don't feel qualified to to always criticize because i don't know how to i don't even know if it's necessary yeah i feel like the way i look at fights the way i try to look at fights is i look at them like we're looking at mathematics i'm looking at like there's an equation going on and one there's values and there's numbers in in one side and there's values and numbers in the other side. What's fascinating to me about this fight is there's equations where you have to factor in many things.

You have to factor in power. You have to factor in technique. You have to factor in the ability to execute. And you also have to factor in persona and personality and just charisma. And that's one of the things that Conor brings to the table that's hard to, it's hard to monetize, or not monetize, it's hard to quantify. It's hard to measure how much he fucked with Aldo's head

before Aldo just chased after him and got lit up like that. I mean, what was it that caused that? There's many possible factors, but all these movements and interactions that they have, I think you can almost look at them like a mathematical exchange. There's certain guys, like Ed Shortfuse Herman, great guy, tough guy, very good fighter. You're never going to confuse him with Wonderboy Thompson

when it comes to his footwork and his movement. If you looked at those two guys mathematically, you looked at them as an equation, you would go, well, this side is very lopsided in its movement. You know, like if you have $100 in one hand and $10 in the other hand, the $100 is worth more than $10. That's just a fact. It is. Yeah, you're right.

That's just a fact. It is. Yeah, you're right. And all that prefacing it was coming to say that now that I've watched through the eye that I'm thinking it's Conor's eye watching him and his eye watching Conor, I see Dos Anjos as being taken to the best level of what you can take guys who still are kind of sturdy. They've still got that old version of strength, different, not sort of free and flowing, and you see his telegraphing. That doesn't mean he can't fuck you up.

Just because I would see that doesn't mean you can do anything about it or stop it, or if he ends up on the ground, he's like, who's fucking telegraphing now? None of that may matter, but that is what I definitely see now that when I'm picturing, what is Connor seeing? Like you see,

boom, move back. Boom. Like it's, it's a much more sort of labored and it's built around an old sturdy style of building a fighter and Condit and, and McGregor and all these guys believe that the answer to that is not only mobility where we move our feet, but how we move through space.

You know, Condit comes on weird angles and different things, and that's got to be what he's seeing. Whether that matters or not, it suddenly doesn't matter at all if he puts you on your back and caves your face in. Yeah, and he's got some very good movement himself, though. Dos Anjos may telegraph things a little bit, but it's because he puts so much power into his shots. What's shocking about him, though, is his ability to close the distance.

It's very fast. That's one of the things that I've disagreed with what Conor said, is that he's a slower, stuck-in-the-mud version of Aldo. Man man i don't see that at all i see a fucking savage yeah he is a fucking savage like as i watched it it's like you're looking for what you could think you could exploit and that's the thing it's like okay i think i can i think i can see the things coming now that may turn out to not be true and that's

a bad time to figure that out yeah it's when you're getting ripped in the face but uh but at the same time it's also like the dude is just so aggressively violent um but whether it's mcgregor is not at in my opinion yet or we haven't seen it at the dominic cruz level but let's say that you and i have a really great fighter and somebody says we'll give you guys a million dollars if you can have this guy beat dominic Cruz in five years. What do you do? If we start figuring out, trying to teach him the same movement as Dominic Cruz, the most we could hope for is him achieving Dominic Cruz five years earlier. The five years of learning it, Dominic Cruz has improved for five years. We've got to figure out the answer to make it not about that. That's the hard part.

We've got to figure out the answer to make it not about that. That's the hard part. And that's what Conor and his people, I think, believe. Is we'll make it not about what he wants it to be about. Well, don't you think with a guy like Dominic Cruz, one of the reasons why Dominic has created that style is because he's not capable of putting a guy away with one shot. He's not that kind of Conor McGregor, one punch, death touch kind of a guy. He just doesn't have that. So he's got to hit you with volume. And he's not that kind of conor mcgregor one punch death touch kind of a guy he just doesn't have that so he's got to hit you with a volume and he's also very smart and very smart guys don't want to get hit so what do they do they you they incorporate a lot of footwork and dominic's

footwork is pretty fucking spectacular i watched him we were all just hanging around backstage one day and he and brian stan and dc were talking just joking around and DC said show me some of that footwork Brian or show me show me some of that footwork Dominic and he steps in with his shuffle and then sidestep and I'm like whoa like when you see him just playing around with someone standing in front of him like Brian Stan was just standing there for him and he's like like the way he's moving it's like you have to calculate that you have to figure out like what you think he's coming this way but he's going that way and then he's coming this way again like wow yeah he's nice it's

amazing this isn't like improvised like these are like very specific very uh his the the amount of efficiency involved in these movements are excellent. It's wild and it's that same thing we were saying you know I don't do submissions from guard anymore so all my training partners are not dealing with that. Some guys quietly just building the shit out of that. Dominic's been doing that

for 10 years. If you try to figure that out now good luck 10 years. Well here's what I want to know. He did it in front of everybody. They all saw him do it and they still let him do it. And they didn't try to, you know what I mean? He did it right out in front of everybody's nose. It's hard to figure out. I mean, you watched him do it even while he was doing it with TJ. I was like, there's so many movements that he's capable of doing. There's so many different combinations of steps and exchanges. And like, you think he's stepping this way and he switches stances and he goes off to the left and he knows you're going to

step in. Like, is this a movement drill? Here, look at this. Good fucking luck. If you want to catch up to that, he's been building that for 10 years in front of everybody. And everybody sat around going, well, that's just Dominic yeah I mean he's different that's incredible Dominic would tell you he's not different he would say if you did this for 10 years you could do it too you know what I mean no wonder why he gets plantar fasciitis too right Jesus Christ

that's incredible I mean that's that's his solution for having he says he has bitch hands he jokes around about it because he has small hands and he's broken them several times. I mean, he put away Mitsugaki in the first round, but it's very rare that he puts guys away. He just doesn't have the physical frame for it. But because of that, he's developed all this incredible movement.

It's one of the things I always tell people when you learn jujitsu. Don't learn jujitsu from a gorilla. Learn it from an Eddie Bravo or, you know, a small guy, you know, a small, a small, physical guy who's not imposing. Those guys are the ones you really want to learn technique from them because they've had to develop that technique. It has to be laser sharp because they don't have the ability to gorilla out of things. When you learn jiu-jitsu from really big people, man, it's rare that they're technical. It's really rare.

Because they can make it work. Yes. Yeah. You want a Barrett Yoshida, right? You want a little tiny guy that has just a laser-sharp technique, an Eddie Bravo, a Hoyler Gracie. You know, a small person who's just got fucking razor, the Mendez brothers. Perfect example. Small guys with razor sharp technique.

And if you watch them roll against even bigger guys, their technique is so fucking sharp. Yeah. They can get through. Whereas, like, if you find a big guy who's got gorilla jujitsu and he fights a bigger gorilla, he gets fucked up. That's just what you said earlier when Hoyce went into UFC 1. Because they knew it would be that much more amazing if the little dude did it. Sort of. That's not really what happened, though.

That's the standard description of what happened. What really happened was they couldn't control Hickson. Hickson was the master of the family. Everybody knew he was the king. But you couldn't, like, if Hickson won, he would be be like I want ten million dollars and now I'm gonna go surf And he would just do whatever the fuck he wanted. I mean Hickson Truly marches to the beat of his own drum and no one could control him And so his brother was not really interested in putting Hickson in that position

The idea was put hoist in if voice lost Then you go into negotiations with Hickson. Right. And you get Hickson in there. Because Hickson's going to fuck everybody up. It would have changed everything, though. It would have been different. Yeah. The way he did it would have been different.

Like, have you ever looked at some of the brutal beatdowns, the Gracian action beatdowns that Hickson did? He's so goddamn strong. He's not just unbelievably technical with his jiu-jitsu, but also really physically, really physically strong. I think some of the audience, a lot of them maybe wouldn't have gone, Oh my God, jujitsu is amazing. They'd have gone,

Holy shit, this guy's a killer. Yes. And, and hoist being there, it was hoist fighting tonight too. I know. Isn't that crazy?

We're sitting here. Hoist is going to fight in like three hours. He's fifth in his fifties. He's in his 50s. He's at least 50, right? How old is Hoist? I think Ken and him are both 50. Just let them juice up. Let them juice up.

I mean, they're probably gonna if they can get around it. They're 50. You know what I mean? Like they're 50. Think about being 50. I know, man. I still have this little tiny hint in the back of my mind somewhere that I could fight one more time.

It's just hidden back there. But you were just talking about your head. I know, I know. That your memory's not so hot. Yeah. I have a weird sort of perspective on that. One, that's why I think we have to celebrate these fights way more because these guys are getting hurt. And they're doing it for their adventure or their reasons, but they're still getting hurt.

But I was in Belize with my wife, and it was beautiful, actually. It was beautiful. And you meet – there's a huge percentage of men over 40 that are blind. Whoa. Yeah, they're blind. In Belize? Yeah. Why?

Because they have, one of their biggest crops is cashews. And something about the process of cashew farming makes you go blind in five years or 10 or 20. What? At some point, yeah. Certain people who work in cashew farming, it's known that you will go blind.

Holy shit, man. So when you're 20. Cashews are not worth going blind over, man. And so when you're 20 and you say, I'm going to be a cashew farmer, you're doing it with the knowledge that you're going to be blind one day. Full knowledge. Because you've known your grandfather. You knew an uncle. There's just a certain percentage of people.

And they do it because at the end, they will provide for their family. It's a good career. You will take care of your kids. And they do it knowing. And people go and they work in mines. People do all kinds of things that harm themselves. But you need to know that it's happening. You need to be fully informed and make a solid decision that this is what you want to do.

And a lot of 17-year-olds who go and start boxing or whatever don't have all that information. No. No, they don't. But if you have it and you're like, this is my passion. This is all I want to do. This is what I want to do with my life. I was put on earth to fight. I know there'll be repercussions for this in my future and I'm choosing to do it. Go do it, man.

It's a free society. You can eat as much sugar as you want and that'll kill you. You can do it, but you want people to know the dangers. I have no idea about cashew farming. Do you find anything on that, Jamie? Please don't tell me that that's a myth. I didn't see anything about blindness, but there's like blood cashews are coming up, and there's the way that they farm them and get them de-shelled is pretty bad,

and it causes people intense pain because there's some sort of liquid that comes out of them when you pull the shell. I don't know if that's actually— Apparently it's a chemical that's used, and I don't know— I don't even know what a cashew shell looks like. I don't know i don't even know what a cashew shell looks like i don't know either but i've never seen this it was something that was mentioned more than a couple of times in in um whoa that's what it looks like yeah how weird so i mean that chemical could be connected to pain blindness may be one of the effects but that was the story that i was told more than a few times uh down there about that they don't even look real.

Look at that. That looks like an avatar plant. That's true. You know? It doesn't look real. It looks like some sort of a weird, crazy squash. But if you decide you're going to go farm that stuff, and you know what the outcome is, and you do it anyways, you chose to do that for whatever your reasons are.

So you're not finding anything on cashews causing blindness? I was going more. Just give it a shot. Yeah, it just makes me sad that these people obviously don't have a whole lot of options. It makes me not want to buy cashews. But then again, then they don't have any money. So what the fuck do you do? Yeah, fighting is also, some people can get away with it.

Boss Rutten, who was here on Wednesday, obviously former UFC heavyweight champion, one of the greats, one of the real pioneers of the game, sharp as a tack. No problems mentally at all. I mean, Bas was just, he was our 10. He's speaking a second language, by the way. You know, he speaks Dutch. So in English, he's smooth as silk.

He's talking fast. He's got all these great stories. His memory's sharp as a razor. There's no problems with him at all. And then, of course, we all know guys that are punchy. And I've known a lot of guys from the time when I was a teenager, and now today I can't talk to them anymore because they're fucked up. Guys from my old boxing gym, they're fucked up, man.

They have real problems. Like, they're very, very compromised. And I feel very fortunate that I'm not, I'm sure there's something going on. I'm definitely, I definitely got hit a lot. So I'm sure there's something that didn't go well up in there. Probably made me more impulsive, more angry or more aggressive. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what it is, but overall I got out of it pretty unscathed, but it's because I stopped fighting when I was 22. You know, I realized at that age, I was like, this is, I'm already getting headaches. And this is, there's no future in it

back then. There was no money in it back then. There was no MMA. It was just kickboxing. And I was like, man, I'm not, this isn't my, you know, I was way better at Taekwondo than it was at kickboxing. You know, I was, my kicks were my, my biggest attribute and I was like, man, I'm not, this isn't my, you know, I was way better at Taekwondo than it was at kickboxing. You know, I was, my kicks were my, my biggest attribute and I was learning how to box more. And in that learning, I was getting the fuck beat out of me. I definitely, the most abuse I took was boxing, but I love boxing. It's fun. I love it.

And I took a lot of it. I remember I got a, I got a couple of concussions. One for sure that I remember it's almost like life was different the moment after that concussion. The way that I saw the world was different after I took that one punch. It was just training. How so? I don't know. My perception or something.

In what way? I had a headache and I threw up that night. I was in Lethbridge and Jordan Meehan, his dad Lee is a good friend. Lee and I threw up that night. So I was in Lethbridge and, you know, Jordan Meehan. His dad, Lee, is a good friend. And Lee and Jordan were out of town. And I went to train and this guy, Dan Torture Chambers, who is a big, powerful, good 185er. You were sparring with a 185er? Yeah.

I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. So he fights at 185. Yeah. So he was in his 200s, 210s. And I thought we were just going to light spar, but that's not what they do. And I took a crazy straight, oh yeah, he was a southpaw, and I took a crazy straight left or two from him. And then immediately something was different. And then I started slipping it and hitting him with my left hook.

And I was happy. There's moments in fighting where, you know, you find out you're just not, I'm, I'm not like Chris Weidman. You know, that's just the truth. But then there's moments in a fight or in sparring where you're like very proud. Like when threatened with danger, my answer was to fucking hit it back as hard as I could.

So I got through the round or rounds and then I just, I had a headache. I couldn't think. I went and I ring announced that night. I started throwing up in the back and And just my thought process was different. I was single at the time. And there was a really cute girl was asking me to go hang out with her. And I just couldn't focus. And I got better a month or two later. But I feel like that day was different. Like that after that. Yeah, I really feel like I saw things differently or I thought differently or it just it's a moment it's a very distinct moment like

that time I almost didn't get off the couch from the you know that that moment I was different after it no you didn't even get knocked out no that's really crazy it was your bell rat but you kept sparring so you're still mobile yeah your legs were working yeah now think then after you kept sparring. So you're still mobile. Yeah. Your legs were working. Yeah. Now, think about- But then after that sparring, the rest of the- I didn't really train anymore, and then he gave me a ride back, and the rest of the day, even the ring announcing, I think I was probably behaving very strangely during it.

And I don't remember that day super well, other than telling that pretty girl that I couldn't hang out with her because my head hurt so much. I remember the rest of the round, though, and I remember and I got a concussion in the first couple of shots of my first fight, too. And I fought till about the middle of the second round. And I knew I was different. Like, you just know. But it's cool in a weird way that you go and keep fighting because now I understand it when I commentate or when I'm analyzing. And I've had that experience.

And that's why I fought was to have that understanding. But I know what it is to fight with a concussion or spar with a concussion, and you see that guys do it. They're hurting round one, and they'll fight all the way through, sometimes win. I wonder what, if anything, they're going to figure out in the future to mitigate some of the problems with head impacts, whether it's going to be something with stem cells or some sort of a new method of rehabilitating and healing people.

It's so depressing to me to watch this incredible problem-solving at its highest level event like MMA or like boxing or kickboxing or anything along those lines. Football. But knowing that any time like Gokhan Saki lands a head kick on somebody, that guy might not ever be the same again. And that is a big fucking factor that I really get upset when people downplay that. Like when you see someone get head kicked and knocked dead,

they might not ever be the same again. That is a fact. I know a guy back when I was a young kid who got kicked in the head and the doctor told him, I don't want you to ever do combat sports again. I don't want you to ever do contact sports again. I don't want you playing football. I don't want you to do it. You're like, stop. You have to stop. Like you're, you're, you got fucking killed and you survived and you got real lucky and you see guys like that they get hit like that and then they're fighting five months later yeah and then they're

fighting six months later and they're not the same you could tell they're not the same they can't take a shot anymore yeah it's it is spooky it you don't know what the answer is uh because there isn't really one now other than you know you can't spar with big guys like that and do it because it's fun and it's fun to fight. You should never. And most guys aren't doing that. Many guys are not doing that as much. But it's, you know, this is to me, when you get the chance to have people who have trained their whole lives to help us have an experiment in combat right now in front of all of us. That is such a beautiful and wonderful thing in humanity.

Like we were fighting as a part of what we do, fighting as a part of us getting here. It may be a part of our future, depending on where we are and what's happening and different aspects of it. Fighting is a part of us. And to see it done at that level and this sort of almost global experiment kind of way, it's beautiful. It's this wonderful, incredibly artistic thing. But it has the downside. And that's another reason. It just sickens me when I see the way people respond to Aranda or respond, Conor's going to lose one day.

And how are they going to respond to that guy? You know, Johnny Hendricks lost. How are people responding to this? Because these guys are just doing incredible, incredible things for the furthering of what humanity is capable of Well, people love to attack people when they lose like the way Hendrix lost. I saw people attacking online I'm like god damn it. That guy just fought a wizard Yeah, you know he fought like a real striking wizard and he learned something people again

You should have fucking made weight against Woodley. Yeah, you fucking cheater. He was probably on PEDs before. All this hate and nonsense and just terrible, terrible fucking shit. I read about him online. My God. Everyone deals with it. I've actually taken the only time I ever take stabs. And, you know, even talking about it, I don't feel great about it,

but it's when guys miss weight. And other fighters, fighters are doing it. Coaches do it. It's just missing weight, there was always penalties for it. You're going to lose part of your purse. And public finger pointing has always been a part of that penalty. Every other guy on that card has made weight. And it's the worst part about their job. And hopefully guys are getting, I think we are getting away from weight cutting a little more.

As we're getting away from the bodybuilder, wrestler weight. It's a part of that prototype of fighter. And that prototype of fighter is going to keep getting beaten now. That we have new answers to him. And I think as that fighter changes, that weight cutting is a part of that prototype. Well, also USADA and the IV ban, that's a big issue. As soon as they started banning the IVs, you saw people's body weights lowering because they realized they couldn't make that big, crazy 25-pound cut in a couple of days and

rehabilitate enough or rehydrate enough, rather, to be able to fight 24 hours later. You just can't do it. You have to drop your body weight down. You have to. And guys were using diuretics before you saw the two. There were diuretics. We all hear who apparently is doing it, but I talk about

fighting all day on TV. I can't address that because just because some three coaches and two fighters are like, everybody knows that guy's doing it. Never failed a test. There's no evidence. It's just you can't really talk about it. You can make observations around it. But the truth is, in that era, man,

if you were fighting Josh Barnett in Japan, you don't know what somebody else might be on. You don't know what Vanderlei might be on. You've got to go over there. You'd do what you thought you had to do. If you were fighting in pride after a few years,

first call you've got to make is to a doctor. Because you may not want to do. You know, if you were fighting in pride after a few years, first call, you got to make us to a doctor because you may not want to do it. It may be harmful for your future in some ways, depending. But I don't know what, I'm going to pride. Look at these guys. They're all on something.

I need to fight. I've got to make, you know, you don't go ask the bodybuilder at the gym. You go ask a doctor. Well, it's interesting too, because when you watch guys that were competing in pride and were looking amazing, and then you see them when they got over to the ufc and they weren't nearly as good you have to look you have to think one of two things happen

either they took so much punishment and pride that they never really fully recovered which is absolutely possible or they were on some shit yeah and so both or both yeah yeah most likely most likely um the thing people don't see somehow they are oh that guy did steroids and now he's this that may be true but the natural reaction is this whether that's your hormone your hormonal reaction you're doing hand motions for people to just listen yeah yeah there's an up and a down dance yeah uh and uh you know, your hormone levels will crash. Yes. And when they crash, like, you know, TRT Vitor and dad bod Vitor is not like, you know, in theory, if you had to take TRT because you had no or very little testosterone. Well, now that you're off it, you're going to be dad bod Vitor. When I saw that and it was, you know what?

I was really happy for Vitor to not look like, you know, the Incredible Hulk and still win. That said a lot about. You mean when he fought Henderson? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But who knows? Who knows?

You know, that's the problem. Who knows what kind of shenanigans are going on? For sure. You know, especially when you're fighting in Brazil. I hate to say it. It's true. But it is true. It's a different thing.

It's a different thing. It's a different thing. You know, I don't know what the future holds as far as testing for performance-enhancing drugs, but I've got to imagine that they're closing in to the point where there's almost no wiggle room. And these guys are getting popped that never got popped before, like when Gleason got popped. And everybody's like, wow, who fucking saw that coming? Guy looks like the Incredible Hulk. He's one of the biggest weight cutters in the history of the sport i mean he is the biggest 155 pound fighter i've ever seen in my life bigger than anybody because he would weigh 155 make weight shredded and then the next day you'd be like jesus christ he's 200 pounds he's so goddamn big he was

so big just swole shredded not an ounce of fat, just gorilla strong and freakish endurance. But he popped hot for EPO. He popped hot for something else as well, right? Yeah, I forget. Might have been a diuretic too. But then Yoel Romero, another one. You look at that guy and you go, well, how's that even human? I love the USADA guy when he introduced the concept of the smell test.

All that is is basically like, come on. That's what that is. It's like... Well, Nowitzki's on top of it, man. He's giving these guys no space. That's the only way. I mean, either, hey, everybody can do whatever, which is probably going to be unsafe in a lot of ways. Yes.

Or, well, we're going to kind of test, but you guys work around it. going to be unsafe in a lot of ways. Yes. Or, well, we're going to kind of test, but you guys work around it. Your workarounds will be an acceptable amount of drug use that we're all going to say we're okay with and just do it. Well, it's interesting because the UFC didn't have to do this. Yeah, I know. This is all their own idea.

This is not instituted by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. This is entirely the UFC's idea to bring in Nowitzki and say, look, let's fucking chase this down to the end of the earth. Let's find exactly what the fuck these people are doing and let's clean up the sport. And you're seeing much more realistic bodies, much more realistic performances. You're seeing guys like Eric

Silva change radically. He used to look like a yoked up Bruce Lee. And then he became an athlete. Looks like a regular athlete. Yeah. I was in Saskatoon when he fought. And when he went out to do the open workout, we were like, oh, this guy looks totally different.

Totally different. You know, it's funny. Being a fan or a fanatic fan, people always, there's a lot of that negativity we were talking about. People always want to take a jab at the ufc or dana or whatever nobody ever wants to point out the good moves like the really positive moves that they make and this is one of those it's a huge it's a big one it's a big one um you you can't half-ass it because if you half-ass it and leave it to the um and nick dana used to say it's not job, it's the commission's job. The reason they instituted this is like,

they're just not doing a good enough job. They're not. They're not, so we'll have to do this. The piss testing is inexpensive, and that's why they would do it. The type of blood test that the USADA guys are doing is so much more comprehensive, which was also why it was so maddening

when Nick Diaz got in trouble. Because Nick Diaz, and this is also to Nowitzki's credit, Nowitzki was one of the ones that's saying, this is fucking bullshit. This suspension's bullshit. What they're doing's bullshit. Because the USADA testing showed him under the limit. So he is fine. Yeah.

And then they had some other wacky piss test that's not nearly as accurate, and that's where he tested high. And so they fined him $100,000. that's where he tested high and so they find him a hundred thousand dollars now it's uh it's it's went from 165 down to 100 or something like that and then they're they're going to give him a 16 month suspension instead of they have three years five years and they were going to give him five years that's insane well they just gave vanderley three years you saw that yeah yeah but here the problem with the vanderley thing is they did it just before he's going to fight Fedor in Pride. Now, if he goes – or in Rizin, rather.

I'm saying Pride. Yeah, right. Pride never die. So he's going to fight Fedor in Rizin so he will have violated his ban so that it will essentially keep him out of fighting in the United States forever. I mean, that's a sneaky thing they did right there. A lot of people aren't pointing that out. Like, they kept that guy on the shelf. They told him he's banned for life. They fucked with him.

They wouldn't give him a hearing. They kept postponing the hearing. Then, coincidentally, right after the guy gets a big fight, he's going to fight in August in Rison, and then immediately they hit him with his three-year. I think he's only 17 months in for the original suspension from the time

where they caught him to today. I think it's only 17 months. I think you're right. If that's the case, that's a year and five months. This guy's still got another year and a half to go. So he can't fight Fedor. He can't get that payday. Or he can go and say, I'm going to finish my career in Japan.

He's going to. I think he's going to. I think he's going to, which is sad for fans over here. Well, what was the most sad thing was all those crazy videos he was doing. I know. Where he was saying the UFC is disrespecting the athlete and they're paying him. And then the UFC is like, all right, well, we're going to tell everybody how much money you made. And then you found out Vanderlei made $9 million.

And you're like, wait, wait, wait. That's not poverty. Yeah. Dude, you made $9 million? And he only won a couple of fights. Yeah. I mean, obviously, he's a fucking legend yeah and one of the all-time greats and one of my if i had to pick like three favorite fighters vanderley's in that

top three pretty because he was so much fun to watch he was just when you saw vanderley rolling his wrists before those fights imagine looking at that over there come on he was chaos man which is make what makes the crow Cop knockout of him even more impressive is that Crow Cop showed the difference, man. The difference between a guy who's a wild brawler

and an elite striker. For sure. Yeah, you feel bad for Vandal. That reaction with those videos and he loved being a hero. He loved it. When I talked to him, he loved the people and he loved being a hero yeah he loved it like when i talked to him he loved the people and he loved that people celebrated it a big reason that he loved fighting was the audience and he told me that that he loved it and then somewhere between jail injecting some

jailness in there and a few other things suddenly the audience was negative against vanderley for some length of time it was the the ultimate fighter. He acted like an asshole. He acted like a bully and an asshole and it didn't work. And Chael made him look like a fool. He made him look like a fool verbally and then physically when Chael took him down really pretty easily. Chael made him

look like an asshole. That's what Conor's doing now. Conor's been compared to him. I don't think there's it's not even. Chael? Yeah. Like in the thinking. I don't think it's a similarity. But you can't fuck with guys who are so good at that. You will lose. It's either going to affect your performance. You're going to look bad.

I thought my guy Uriah figured out exactly how to tangle with Conor McGregor. Like he became kind of a friend and he was a part of the game. Joking around with him. Exactly. That's what Uriah does. Yeah. He's got it. He's jovial.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's a very likable cat. You know, it's looking like it's going to be Uriah and Dominic Exactly. That's what Uriah does. Yeah. He's got it. He's jovial. Yeah. Yeah. He's a very likable cat. It's looking like it's going to be Uriah and Dominic Cruz. That's crazy. What do you think about that? One of the reasons I wanted to fight and wanted to learn more about fighting, and one of the

things that pointed me to start pursuing this was Uriah Faber, Mark Hominick, these little guys that fought. I admired them, wanted to be like them. I was older, so I'm a Uriah guy. But when he went to fight Frankie, my breakdown kind of was, this guy's really fucking good at these things. And he gets better at these certain things.

But we got to see some kind of innovation out of him. We have to see something else. Uriah wins with drive and determination. He'll win every position. He wins with will and he wins by overwhelming you. He can mentally break you.

He can't be stopped. All of that is great. But we need something more technically. We need some new tricks. We need some shit that the other guy doesn't know. He didn't have that

against Frankie. I'll say exactly the same thing for Dominic Cruz. He must have some new things, some other stuff. Just being the best Uriah isn't going to win him this fight, I don't think. He's got to have some other different answers. Yeah. I wonder what he's doing as far as working on his footwork and working to try to deal with... I mean, he has fought him twice. He's the only guy to beat Dominic. He caught Dominic with a guillotine in their first fight. And I wonder what with. I mean, he has fought him twice. He's the only guy to beat Dominic. Yeah. He caught Dominic with a guillotine in their first fight. And I wonder, like, what's...

I mean, having the knowledge of having faced Dominic not just once but twice, and especially the second time he knocked him down a couple times. Yeah, yeah. Very close fight. Just like TJ was a very close fight.

Yeah, very close fight. With Dominic, so... We were talking about this earlier. So somebody says, go figure out. Here's your guy. Go figure out how to beat Dominic Cruz. You have three years. What the fuck do we do?

Leg kicks. Yeah. Leg kicks is going to be a big one. I think leg kicks, giant factor. Slow those legs down almost at all costs. I think, first of all, you've got two things to consider. One, Dominic is most likely not going to knock you out with one punch. Yeah.

Okay? So he doesn't have the kind of knockout power that a Connor does where you really have to be terribly fearful about closing that distance. So you know his number one asset is his movement. Chop those legs, man. Chop those legs. If I was him, I would go and train with the best Muay Thai leg kicker I could find. I would seek them out.

I would say this is priority number one, and maybe even concentrate on switching stances quite a bit, because Dominic will switch stances quite a bit. And if you're right, I could switch stances and throw the power back leg kick from the southpaw position and from orthodox. That would open up those kicks and work on those combinations when Dominic is switching. Work on also going across the top of the thigh if he's not in the right position to throw the outside leg kick. If you were ordinarily going to inside, throw it like an outside, but take that right step and go across the top of the thighs.

Slick stuff. Yeah, slick stuff. So this is part of my McGregor breakdown, but there's lots of little elements. It was Jeremy Stephens. I was asking him about fighting Max Holloway. And he's like, I'm like, you know, these guys who move, they're long, they're going to be lateral, all this kind of stuff. And he said, we have to keep them in the headlights.

Right. So we're a car and our headlights kind of go out on an angle. If we keep them in that lit area of the headlights, that's great. But he doesn't want to be there. He wants to be outside of there. So what do we do? Small steps. He's making grand movements,

but if we keep our headlights lined up and we're working at angles the way a goalie looks at dealing with something, we make small steps and small adjustments to keep him in the headlights. Then when he goes to flee outside of there, quite simply, the right kick is the barrier that way, and the left kick is the barrier that way,

and we kind of shoehorn him into our headlights as best as we can. Faber's never really used leg kicks that way, but sure as fuck sounds like a great idea. If we can just keep them in those headlights, and as he goes to flee, that extra weapon of the leg starts to— if our headlights are a certain width, the leg becomes the barrier to keep him in there. That's got to be a starting point. How crazy would it be if Faber reunited with Dwayne Ludwig? If they buried all the bullshit, got together. It's so crazy.

It wouldn't happen because now that he's with TJ and they've said so much bad shit about each other. I don't think it would, but it is too bad. But he needs someone like that. He needs someone who's going to really tighten up those those footwork movements and those leg kick movements but if we saw a totally different uriah imagine that he comes out hands up high and just starts attacking those legs i mean that would be wild it would be uh oh shit again with the memory who's uh that uh jorgensen when uriah fought jorgensen that was my favorite performance ever and And that's the Dwayne Ludwig was cornering him.

And he did something we see TJ do a lot. I call it like a shell game or like a ball and cups. Like, you know, we've got three cups. Which one has the ball? When TJ changes his level, obviously that can be a takedown. But it can also, from there, he comes up with the right uppercut. From the same spot, he comes up with the left high kick. He has takedowns. He has so many things, and it all centers on that position.

Which just shows you how smart Dwayne is. We have these wrestlers. In wrestling, they have this level change spot. That's going to be the home to many of our attacks. And Uriah did that awesomely against Jorgensen. Now, Jorgensen is not Dominic Cruz, but he did it so beautifully. The level change became a starting point for like eight different options. TJ tried to use that with Cruz, but Dominic Cruz literally won when a magician,

you're a magician, you're trying to do a trick on me, or a comedian tries to tell you a joke, you're like, I fucking heard all these jokes, or I've seen all these tricks. A magician can't do that to another magician. So Cruz just wouldn't play a ball and cup game. He's like, I'll dance around out here. You chase me around, put your ball and cups on like a little trolley and try to convince me to play it. I'll just kick them off, you know? And so that he's just different. And Cruz is so fucking smart. Like he's so brilliant, you know? And that goes right back to that sort of growth mindset when the guy had fucked off legs he's like well i still got to get better i'll learn more about fighting i'll learn to explain it better i'll learn to analyze it better i'll make myself understand it more he

used instead of that being well two years down the tubes it was like two years i'm going to gain other skills and other applicable skills. And it made him way better. He's way better because he had that surgery, you know, than if he just was in the gym and he never was forced to take that time. Yeah, I bet you're probably right. And he's one of my favorite analysts. The way he breaks down fights, especially when it comes to making mistakes and striking, leaving yourself open to get hit. He's so good at not getting hit.

leaving yourself open to get hit. He's so good at not getting hit. It's one of the best things. He is so good at explaining how to not get hit or why someone made a mistake in getting hit. Yeah. Oh, he's so brilliant. I love, it's funny too. It's like, I've met him like once.

When it was TJ and him, I was asking him about the fight. And I could see him going, okay, this guy kind of knows about fighting because he doesn't give a fuck if you like him. You know what I mean? Dominic Cruz. I like that about him. I like that about even the way he does analysis or commentary. He doesn't really give a fuck. You asked me to analyze some shit.

I'm going to analyze some shit. He's doing it like mathematics. Yeah. Yeah. One plus one is one, whether you like me or not. Yeah. One plus one is two. See, I can't even count with that.

One plus one is one. Yeah. You know what i'm saying he's like he's putting it together in a really clear obvious manner and if it doesn't you don't have to enjoy his personality in order to appreciate the brilliance of what he's saying yeah but i like his personality and i think he's a super smart articulate guy we only we did a little bit of commentary together i saw it and uh i really enjoyed it i really enjoyed like being able to bounce ideas off of him and ask questions. And I would like to do that with a bunch of different kind of fighters, too,

because guys who aren't like him, maybe like a Damian Maia. One of my favorite, when Damian Maia fought Neil Magny, I couldn't wait to interview him because I wanted to know what adjustments he was making when he couldn't tap him from his back, and then he eventually did get it. And he was explaining to me how he saw that he was defending on one side, so he started turning him towards the other side and setting him up to defend on that side so he could catch him on the other side. Just so smart.

Oh, man, it's so important. It's everything. It's one of the most important things about MMA is analyzation of technique and having that fighter explain to you can it's it illuminates things in such a beautiful way. Like when I say, well, what did you see? That was as well. What I saw was he kept blocking on this side or he kept moving towards that. So I was going to try to pretend that I was going to do the same thing I was doing before, but set him up for a different thing. And that level of like his skill level is so incredibly mind-bogglingly high.

It's so easy for him to think in there. Like a lot of guys, guy in fight number three, he's like 8-0 and it's UFC fight two. It's like, I got to get the choke. Got to get the choke. Oh my God, he's stopping the choke. Okay, I'll try to get it on. Like it's just the thought process isn't as clear and concise as damian maya who's like all right jujitsu i do this every day for my whole life and you don't you know what's interesting

about maya as opposed to anybody else too he's really adamant about not wanting to hurt people yeah he's like you know once i you know i got him to the ground you know i throw a few punches just to open him up but i really wanted to get the choke. I don't want to hurt him. I'm like, wow. I don't want to hurt him. Wild. That is his real mentality.

He's not bullshitting. He's not trying to get you to like him more by pretending to be more kind and peaceful. No, he really is not trying to hurt you. He's just trying to win. Fighting isn't violence. It doesn't have to be violence. It happens to be violent. But it is competition.

It's violent. When Rumble Johnson fights, it's fucking violent. Yeah, okay. That's true. Man, he's so... The thing about Rumble Johnson that doesn't get enough, people can't necessarily appreciate is how good he is like everybody always got power yes he has power he has crazy power but he also when you watch his hips and you watch his feet he is in position to deliver power anywhere all the time

and that like when you we're trying to figure out you know how cm punk is going to fight and i'll talk to people who've never trained or never studied training or whatever. They're like, well, he could be pretty good. It's like I can tell you exactly how good you can be at this stage because if you look at the very best people you've ever watched train with the best coaches at 18 months, this is maybe what they're capable of. And he's 36 or whatever. And he's not a super athlete. So it'll be a little less than that. He's fucked.

Yeah, he's fucked. He's fucked. He made a big – I feel like – i feel for him because i looked at that when he started doing that i was like i know exactly how he feels i wanted to fight i wanted to figure it out i wanted to get in there but i there's that thing um unconscious incompetence right unconscious incompetence you don't know what the fuck you're talking about and you don't even know that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and you don't even know that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Yeah. And if you learn enough, eventually you get conscious incompetence, where you're like, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about,

but at least I know that so I can start learning some shit. Right. Then you'll get conscious competence, where you're like, yeah, I'm pretty good. I got to think about it. I consciously am working at it. And then the greats are unconscious competence. Yeah, I don't have to think. Damien Maia doesn't have to fucking think about it. I consciously am working at it. And then the greats are unconscious competence. Yeah, I don't have to think. Damien Maia doesn't have to fucking think about it. He was unconsciously incompetent when he said he wanted to fight in the UFC. And I feel for him. The guy didn't know

what he was doing. It sounded like a cool thing. He's a driven guy who believes you can achieve what you put your mind to and you work really hard. He just was unconsciously incompetent. He didn't have enough knowledge to know how much could be acquired, what he might be capable of if he worked harder than anyone had ever worked in his life for 18 months. He didn't understand how low that would be. Yeah, you still suck. Yeah, you suck. Yeah, there's no way.

If you have no background in combat sports at all and you're 36 years old and you think you're going to fight in the UFC in a year,'s almost insulting yeah yeah kudos to him for giving it a shot I understand the motivation but I got mocked and ridiculed and fucking ended up with a concussion when I did it on the smallest levels people who were in fighting who the fuck is this guy to come into fighting so I feel for him that way I know he probably really loves fighting he just didn't know how shitty was the maximum he could get at this stage and that level of shittiness is not good enough to ever fight in the UFC never mind debut in the UFC it's also I don't think he's that much of an athlete no like when I watch him move I watch his there's nothing about him where

I go like well okay we're watching like a Brock Lesnar. Brock Lesnar was a fucking freak athlete. You would watch that guy move. I remember the first time I saw Brock fight. I saw him fight. I mean, I obviously had seen some videos of him in WWE doing some spectacular shit. It was a physical specimen beyond compare, right? specimen beyond compare, right?

But when I saw him fight in K-1, I was in LA when they fought, and he fought some Japanese gentleman, took him down, just smashed him. I remember thinking, good luck keeping that motherfucker off you. That's a totally different kind of a thing. With this CM Punk guy, what you guys, a good looking guy who speaks well, he's got a lot of charisma, and that led him to the top in wrestling. But if you watch his wrestling moves, like there's nothing ridiculous about it. You look at his body. There's nothing ridiculous about his body. He's not doing anything out of the ordinary.

He just didn't understand how little knowledge and skill could be acquired in the time that he was going to look at. He just couldn't know. Where, where is he at now? Have you seen him train? I've seen a bit of it. You know, like it looks where you'd think a guy who worked really hard for a year and a half would be, which is okay if you just... Let's watch some of it. See if you can find CM Punk training. Yeah. What's that?

I've been looking right now. They had no videos for any time recently. There's like some stuff I'm looking at from August of last year. Let's try that. The reason I brought him up when I was talking about Anthony Johnson is one of the first things that you find when you go and let's see what we got here. I'll tell you. What you find is that you can do these things, but as soon as a guy is moving, you're not in balance anymore. As soon as you're in reality, you're not in balance. I mean, the athleticism stuff here.

This is not CM Punk, though. This is Luke Rockhold. Oh, CM Punk, EXO's performance center? Okay. I mean, that's a guy working out, you know? Yeah. It doesn't show too much. That's it?

I saw him hitting pads at one point. It looked like he would think. Yeah, like look at this. He's jumping up on these boxes. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. It's not a knock against him. No. He just didn't know.

He was unconsciously incompetent. What could we achieve? It's like we were talking. It's mathematics. It's similar. Okay, here we see his guard. First of all, look at this. He's a fucking white belt.

Yeah. This is crazy. And he's doing this with Henner Gracie. Okay, so he's doing some plank workouts. It's an old video, too. It's an old video. It's a 2014, I think. Okay.

But even that, I mean, two years. The reality is, unless you're 20 years old, two years is not really a lot of time to get prepared for something. If you're a 20-year-old guy, you can watch somebody who's a blue belt at 20 years and then in two years they're a black belt that is possible if you're obsessed if you're a fucking maniac if you're a real nut if you're some bj penn when he was in his prime but you know this guy probably likes pussy he likes to eat he's got bills he's got taxes he pays he's probably got media obligations you know it ain't that easy to become a complete fucking obsessed freak and then again the whole thing is like athletically his body did not develop to explode i have a good buddy of mine who's very good at jujitsu and i brought him to a boxing gym once and uh the uh the guy was holding

pads for him and i was like oh my god like watching him hit pads i I was like, fucking crazy. He'll nail it. He's never going to get it. His body did not grow exploding like that. His body moved slow and it was labored. It was like me trying to write a fucking book with my left hand. It was like awkward. He just couldn't do it. And I remember thinking like, wow, okay. Like these, there's just,

they're just not there. Is this him here? Yeah. I mean that, you can tell that's a white belt who, who is trained a bit, you know? That's not too bad. It's all right.

But, uh, even the white belt for life thing, that, that smells of being, trying not to be, you know, he says he's a white belt for life,

what are you saying? Yeah, it reeks of not being judged. And fighting is not a place you want to not be judged. This is not bad. This is not bad. This movement is not bad. But he's training with Henner Gracie, by the way, who's just a fucking wizard and an awesome instructor.

Okay, that's bullshit. Yeah. And there was space as he pushed that off, too. Yeah. But, you know, it's, hey, man, if this guy was still wrestling and he loved fighting, was talking about it, was fighting on a small scale, Batista fought, and he had a great fight. It was a really good fight for a guy who's only been training for a while.

And that's the way to do it. Yeah, that's the way to do it. In a small organization, fight somebody who's, like, at your level. Yeah. The other thing that really bummed me out is that he just got back surgery. Yeah. Man, back surgery is fucking tricky as shit, man. They start chewing away at those discs.

There's other ways to handle that. I don't know how bad it was, but the guy was walking around and Matt Brown had a good conversation about that recently. I was reading some of the things that Matt Brown said about his own bulging discs because he didn't have to get surgery.

He rehabilitated it. But he does a lot of work down at Westside Barbell with Louie Simmons who created the reverse hyper, a machine that we have in the back here. And I bought one specifically because I knew that Louie had designed it because they were trying to get him to have back surgery and he wasn't buying it. And he was like, there's got to be a way. If there is a way to compress the disc to make it bulge out like that, there's got to be a way. If there is a way to compress the disc to make it bulge out like that, there's got to be a way to decompress the disc actively and strengthen the area.

So he created that reverse hyper machine. And, you know, to see this guy go straight to back surgery like that, when just a few days before that he was standing there talking to that Mickey Gall kid. Picking Ariel up. Yeah, I mean, what the fuck is going on, man? Why are you getting surgery? Have you reviewed all the options? That and, you know, he was saying to Ariel, I want to fight on either 199 or 200.

I hope I got the juice to fight on 200, which is crazy. You shouldn't have any juice regardless of how famous you are. The juice meaning the notoriety? Yeah, I guess. I don't know. But are you lying to Ariel then because you knew you were having back surgery? Are you lying now that it was weeks before you saw this guy fight? Regardless, I want to pick on the guy because I understand his motivation.

But I think if somebody asked my opinion, if he was my friend and he said, what do you think I should do? I'd be like, why don't you come out and have a long, interesting conversation with somebody, somebody you know, Ariel's his friend, and say, listen, I went and I explored this for a long time. I found some incredible things in fighting. It gave me this. I learned this stuff. And what I discovered was there's no way I could fight. That's crazy. It would have been an insult to fighting. And I learned enough to know it. And now that I love it, I want to work for the UFC. I want to do some other things. I want to contribute. People would look and go, honesty, right. That's one of those things we never see. It's so refreshing. Just come out and say, I trained my ass off.

And what I found was only a further appreciation for fucking everybody in this gym and all these fighters. And I learned enough to understand that I barely know anything about fighting. But now that I love it, I want to do some other stuff in fighting. We'd all probably go, cool. That's great. That's what he should do. Well, I don't think he can't fight. I think he definitely could fight. I don't think that

a year is nearly enough time to fight in the UFC. I think that's preposterous. But I think anybody could fight at a commensurate level. If you could find someone who is at your level, who's been training as long as you have, and have an amateur fight, there's absolutely nothing wrong with

not being the best in the world, or not being at a world championship or a world-class UFC level. There's nothing wrong with that. No, no, nothing at all. I think what insults a lot of people is that he jumped right into the UFC and he did so because, not just because he has notoriety and when he was younger he was a boxing champion or a wrestling champion like Brock Brock was NCAA national champion. I mean, you got to look at Brock and go,

Hey man, you know, maybe the guy can actually do it with him. You're like, you never wrestled in high school. You never wrestled in college. You, you're a white belt in jujitsu.

You're a white belt in like, what are you in karate? What are you in Muay Thai? And, and to not strike until you sign a contract. That to me is insane. You're having a conversation about maybe fighting in the UFC in two years. You start training yesterday.

You don't wait and then figure out what gym. They want a training striking. That's insanity. You know, but I get it. Well, he went to the right place. Yeah, Duke's amazing. He's such a wonderful guy. Duke Rufus is the shit.

I mean, that gym is amazing. He's such a wonderful guy. Duke Rufus is the shit. I mean, that gym is amazing. He's got fantastic training there from Daniel Wanderley to Ben Asprin to Pettis to Duke himself, who's just amazing. Coach Cush, Scott Cushman. He's got a great gym. If I was thinking about fighting, that would be one of the places that I would consider. Yeah, he did the right thing. Between that, TriStar, Firas Al-Habi, Alliance, Matt Hume. I would just go to Matt Hume right on the spot. Matt Hume's a fucking genius, man.

He's a goddamn genius. And he's the most low-key of all of them. You don't hear a peep out of that guy. Demetrius and him are symbiotic. Demetrius is Matt Hume's cruising around the world, knows everything about fighting, fought himself, researched his study loved the martial arts pursuing it

looking for all the truths of martial arts and along comes this super athlete and he's like I'm going to invest a couple years see if he really

oh shit he's really becoming he learns incredibly well he's a good guy he's a smart person oh shit then once he gets to that level

it's just like I'm going to commit my life to making you the champion. And symbiotically, Matt trains with him, physically trains with him. He's his training partner most of the time and he's a fucking genius.

That symbiotic one-on-one thing, there isn't much of that in the world. There's not many fighters that have one brilliant coach that commits most of their time to that. It's hard to find someone who's willing to do that and then forget about someone

who has the Knowledge and the ability that Hume has because he's not just a knowledgeable guy But he's very similar in for us a hobby and that he's not just incredibly knowledgeable But he's also incredibly physically capable like for us is fucking nasty He's got nasty kickboxing skills and nasty jujitsu I mean and his knowledge is very deep and wide. And I think the same thing can be said of Matt Hume. It's so rare to find a guy like those two guys.

I admire Farras, and I like him very much. And I just spoke with him the other day on the phone before I went in to do the McGregor one. He was working on something with McGregor, and I love the man. He's brilliant. But the one difference is he's got 50 students, and he makes them great great and he gives them real time and he dedicates himself to them but this guy's basically one of a handful that is crazy but uh for us also seems to be that it's such an interesting martial arts seems to have this interesting path where you know you come along and you learn some moves and then you learn how kind how it works, and then you do work on your body, and then you learn how to learn, and then you learn strategy,

and then all these things grow, and inevitably you end up at a mental thing and then philosophy. Study of martial arts ends up somewhere the study of philosophy, how to live your life, how to learn, how to improve, how to become better in being a human being, not just in kickboxing. That inevitable result, if you stay on the martial arts path long enough, inevitably you end up, how can I be a better person? Like how can I get better at being a human being? And for us it's there. Well, you find that those things are part of what trips people up. You know, part of what trips you up in anything you do is if you have personality flaws,

if you create problems in relationships and interrelationship conflict, problems with friends, problem with wife or girlfriend or what have you, those things that make you a bad neighbor will also make you a bad fighter because they get in your way and you realize you've created this unnecessary, you yell at your fucking neighbor for no reason because his dog shit in your lawn or whatever the fuck it is like you you created a problem that didn't need to be there and now you've got you've got extra friction and conflict in your life that's unnecessary instead of creating some sort of a positive bond by being a really good person so you learn learn, you know, again, no one's perfect, but you learn somewhere along those lines. Okay. If I just approach this in a better, more, you know, more friendly, more open, more nice. And then I get this positive reward out of that. And then I realized

that's the path. The path is to try to be a better person. The path is to try to have more character. The path is to try to be a better friend to be a you know a better training partner you know to make sure that you are pushing your friend towards victory you're not trying to kick his ass because you know he's tired you know that that's a real issue in gyms right when they run a gauntlet having a guy that is going to wear you out but it's not going to fuck you up because he knows he can because he knows you're tired because you just ran with three other guys one thing you should drive me crazy where I would be training and I would be exhausted and I would see a guy sitting down waiting taking the time off of training not training that round

And then as soon as this round is done. He tries to jump on you. I'm like you're just sitting down Why were you just sitting down? And I'll call him out. I'll go, what are you doing? You want to rest and then you want to jump in while you're fresh and other people are tired? Fuck off, man. For sure. Yeah.

I remember sparring with a guy and after I looked, he was wearing like novelty boxing gloves. Like everybody showed up to sparring and he had a little like, it's like, are you out of your fucking mind? Like you're looking for an edge over people you're working with, you know, it's so strange. But, uh, those guys are almost always not good,

but sometimes good enough to hurt you. Yeah. Uh, there's this guy that I used to, I love working with. I just really like, there's a lot of guys in Canada that kind of end up being like, uh,

I kind of get to admire them over time because they were pioneers. And maybe some of them weren't even in the UFC. Some of them got there. Claude Patrick, Sean Pearson, some of those guys who were important Canadian pioneers, Hominick and Pat Cote, all those guys. Joe Dirksen, who's a cool dude. Sure. You admire those guys.

One of them, he never got to the UFC and he's probably close to 40 now, Adrian Woolley. And he was like the best 125er going. And when I would go and I had a fight coming up, I wanted some rounds with Woolley. And the reason I wanted them was one, he would push you really hard. But two, he hurt me one time and he's very aggressive. And he hurt me one time and my leg wobbled. And as I circled, I saw him take the time to let me recover. And that's literally the perfect training partner.

You want him to push you so hard, as close to a fight as you can handle right now and understand what you can handle, but not take you past that point of what you can handle. Be a friend. Yeah, and he was literally, and he was ornery and aggressive, but I loved having him in the rotation

in the last week before a fight or a couple weeks of real training before a fight because of that. It's just like training partners. Some gyms have them. TriStar has some guys. They don't fight. But, man, they're a huge important ingredient to every one of those fighters. Right.

You know, you were talking about getting that concussion in Jordan Meehan's camp. Yeah. What happened with Meehan? He just retired. He's really young. Yeah. You know, his dad just fought recently. What happened with Meehan? He just retired. He's really young. Yeah. You know, his dad just fought recently. Really?

His dad's like 45. Just enormous. And won. And his dad is a cool dude. I don't know exactly. We talked to Jordan after... He's like 25, right? Yeah.

He's got like 30 plus fights. Yeah. He's fucking talented. He's super talented. You see what he did to Mike Pyle? Yeah. You know what I mean? Mike Pyle's brilliant. Mike brilliant mike piles a super fighter well what he was doing at tiago alves

before he took that body kick and props to tiago for figuring a way through that first round and landing that body kick and taking him out but and then for how to have me and retire like that was really shocking my i'm guessing so what i'm going to to say is, I know Jordan. I like Jordan very, very much. His father and I are very good friends. I'm guessing. But I picked up bits and pieces of him kind of figuring out, well, I'll get paid real good money when I'm kind of at the top. And then it's like, wait a second. I'm fighting like top five guys. I'm fighting like Tiago Alves level guys. I'm there. Jordan wants to be rich. And Jordan wants to be successful in life in some of those ways.

And at least he's told me that. And he didn't say anything about pay or any of that stuff. But it was like he's right at the top and he's not becoming wealthy enough for what he's doing. That's my guess. And he loves fighting. But one day he loved other stuff too. He's like, you know what, I didn't, again, I'm guessing, but a guy like him is like,

you know, I didn't have as much sex in high school as a lot of other guys did because I was training all the time. You know, I didn't go on fishing trips as much as other guys because I was training all the time. You know, drinking beer on Saturdays is really fun. Like all of those things happen.

You're 25, you're like, you know, and man, having the guts, the smartness to identify and the guts to quit something. We all as a society think that like, don't quit anything. You're driven. You do it for life.

To really analytically look and go, this will not give me what I want. Even if I achieve the results I will achieve I don't want or are not enough for me. So I will step away if I achieve the results I will achieve I don't want or are not enough for me, so I will step away. I admire that. Like, fucking rock bands

and I'm trying to think of somebody in particular, Aerosmith or someone like that, what the fuck is this guy still doing going up there playing? He might love it, but why is he on American Idol? He needs to still be on TV or he needs an audience or he needs to be worshipped or whatever. You made all the money.

You made all the great records. Go and sit on a beach somewhere. People who go, you know, I've done enough of this stuff. I think I would move on to other stuff. We should admire those people because they're really rare, you know? They are. They are really rare. It's just me and was so talented.

You know, another guy like that that vanished is Adlon Amagov. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what happened to him. He became very religious. And I heard that he was going to be, I'd heard some rumors that he was going to be a cleric or something like that. Wow. Because he was a pretty devout Muslim. I don't know what happened.

But he was another guy. You're like, wow, that guy was so talented. I used to manage some UFC fighters, a couple all the way up. So it was really to learn. Like everything I could do to learn any angle, a fighter, manager, if I could carry the bucket, whatever I could do, I wanted to do. And I came across this guy, Nick Diney. Do you ever remember Nick Diney? Yeah, sure.

Yeah. And I managed Nick and we got him to the UFC. We got Sean Shelby. He fucking loved Nick. And you should. If you go and watch his first fight or his fights in the UFC, he fought like a caveman. The guy has

a master's degree in biochemistry, I think. He's brilliant. But when he fought, he loved fighting like a caveman. And he retired because he said he was taking head trauma. He didn't like it. And he talked about it and he talked with

other people about it. It's like, could I fight different ways? Yes. But he likes fighting like a caveman and fighting like a caveman will result in brain damage. He got knocked out by Marlon Sandro in Sengoku. And then he said, after he recovered from that one, he said, you know, if I ever get another concussion, I'm going to retire. said after he recovered from that one he said you know if i ever get another concussion i'm going to retire and then after the uh the last fight he had he had a broken orbital bone and he thought why am i waiting until after i've sustained the damage to step away why am i saying it's okay to

take one more large amount of damage if i'm going to step away let's just go let's step away you know um he's a brilliant guy one of the most interesting and cool guy i haven't talked to him in a while i'm going to make sure that i to send i give him a call or something he he's a brilliant guy. One of the most interesting and cool guy. I haven't talked to him in a while. I'm going to make sure to send a give him a call or something. He's such a brilliant guy. Very, very smart guy. And he's a guy I always use an example of someone who's very wise and recognizing the risk versus reward and realizing the reward's not worth it anymore. I need to. For all these guys, they have to decide when is it over. When we were talking about the pursuit, like getting after something and being obsessed with something and wanting greatness, there comes a time that's no longer in your mind,

and you're still on this path because it's something you've always done, because you've been a fighter for X amount of years, and so this is what you're doing. You're going into training camp, but you don't have that fire inside you like you did when you first started. Or when you were improving. Or when you were at your best. And that's when you need to stop.

Yeah. It's just so hard for people. It's really hard. One of the things I've heard before is people will, Pauli Malinagy, I never pronounce the name well. Who is actually a brilliant commentator. Very, very good. Very fucking good. Love listening to his comments.

He's one of my favorites in boxing. Very good. He wrote an article about how his passion and desire to get back to fighting, and everyone told him he shouldn't, but it's just in him, he needs that. That cannot be the motivating factor. Among the reasons that that's 100% true it can't be is because when you're 60 you're still going to have that that's never going to go away so that just having that does not mean go fight because you'll always have that it's one of many pieces of a pie chart that you have to have in place yes but if you're going to have it your whole life it's irrelevant whether you have it or

not because you know you have it and one day you're going to have to retire even though you have it so that can't be a part of the decision process. I think you probably didn't see that Rocky movie when Rocky was like 59 and he decided, you know, just thinking about maybe having a fight. Remember that? Yeah. That was the one where he was, who the fuck did he? Yeah. Tommy Gunn?

No, no, no, no. It was after that. Oh, yeah. Was it? The one where he fought the guy who knocked out Roy Jonesn? No, no, no, no. It was after that. Oh, yeah. Was it? The one where he fought the guy who knocked out Roy Jones Jr. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tarver. Antonio Tarver.

Tarver, yeah. Tarver, Magic Man. And, you know, which was fucking ridiculous. And apparently he got knocked out in training. Yeah. And training for that. Yeah. Like at like 60, whatever the hell he was, getting punched in the face by Tarver.

When we're... Yeah. Insane. When we're looking at Anderson Silva fighting, one of his very favorite fighters is Roy Jones Jr. There it is. Look at that. Come on, son.

What the fuck are we even looking at? That's insane. And he's like 70 years old and he looks 30. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing what testosterone replacement therapy has done for him. But like, it's just the fact that he could try to sell that. Jesus, look at him. He's shredded.

Incredible. How old was he when he made this movie? In his 50s. At least. 2006, so 10 years ago. At least. How old is he now? I'm not sure.

Let's find out how old he is now, because that would mean that he had to be like 57 then i think yeah if he's 67 now 69 now so he's 59 god that's insane that's science man that's science jesus christ well i love this this is so he's so it's so insane yeah people always try to say he's five six i'm five eight i stood next to that dude and maybe he had lifts in his shoes but he's he's taller than me really yeah everybody always tries to pretend he's so tiny. That's some weird thing that people do. They always try to pretend that people are tinier than they are. Oh, he's only like 5'5".

Yeah, he's only like three feet tall. I am 5'8". I don't wear lifts in my shoes. I never have. I have terrible posture. I'm short as fuck. I'm 5'6". But when I stood next to him, he's bigger than me.

I expected him to be what everybody says like i want to meet tom cruise because everybody says he's tiny too he might not be tiny i don't know why that would be something that people do but whatever where it's perceived as undermining people just tend to do that yeah yeah people love doing that they love doing that you realize you don't have to do that. Like when you see people, you know, Rhonda comes out and says that she had a horrific experience. People are like, yeah, fuck her. And then when you're like, you know, why are you reacting this way?

They're like, well, she brought it on herself. But yeah, but you're still choosing to have that response. You could easily have a different response. You could easily have a different perspective. Yeah. But that's a long path to improvement for an asshole. You're like trying to improve a troll with one sentence. Yeah. That's a long path to improvement for an asshole you're like trying to improve a troll with one sentence yeah that's like not gonna happen there's a lot of people

also their their life sucks and they see someone who's doing as good as she was doing when she was on the top i mean was it sports illustrated called her the most dominant female athlete of all time and you know there's just so much hype and fanfare and then also there's all the shitty things that she was saying to her opponents and the way she was talking to them and like the

Misha Tate thing when she did the show with her and she would win the competitions and she'd be like fuck you and after she beat her

she walked away and wouldn't shake her hand there was so much fuel for the haters there's so much but it still feels like you don't have a choice but must hate like you do have a choice but must hate.

Like, you do have a choice. Of course, of course. I just feel like sometimes when we say these things, and I do it all the time, I'm guilty of it as charged, but it's almost like you're yelling out into the abyss. Yeah, right. Yeah, I guess.

I just, all you can do is hope that you keep offering up that there is another choice than that. But we also have a binary culture. There was this article I read, The Tinderization of America, where they're going to swipe. Yes. Yep. Want to fuck her or left. Nope.

Don't. And that thought process, that binary process has actually influenced how our culture thinks. Ronda Rousey is either the greatest athlete ever or she fucking sucks and she's terrible. She can lose and still be the greatest athlete ever. She can still be a 99 out of 100. But we can't have that in our culture. She's a left swipe or a right swipe. And people only want one or the other.

There's gray areas in everything in the world. And the gray area is where the beauty is. It's where the interesting, fascinating shit is. And where our culture is making it so that we don't look there. Because of that swipe, though, is why a real winner like Conor

is so spectacular because with the amount of scrutiny, with the amount of pressure that's on him to still perform the way he did and win in 13 seconds

by knockout, then you are the hero. And then that's also why people were shitting on Aldo after that fight so badly. Right. Aldo was the greatest pound for pound. Now he's terrible. No, he's still among the greatest.

He had a lifetime. He had a decade of being the greatest. Maybe he's now been surpassed by somebody or had a long career. A lot of damage took. A lot of damage. A lot of hard fights. Plus the gym wars. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And you talk about how they trained back then. Oh, yeah. He used to live in the gym, probably trained all day, every day. His body's all broken down. Sparring with Andy Sauer on a regular basis. I mean, Sauer's like an all-time K-1 great. By the way, that was Carlos Condit's first kickboxing fight. Yeah, I saw that.

You see that? Yeah, I saw that. How fucking crazy is that? He's got zero fights. He fought a guy with 100 fights. Unbelievable. Un-fucking-sane, I saw that. How fucking crazy is that? He's got zero fights. He fought a guy with a hundred fights. Unbelievable. Un-fucking-sane. I loved it. I watched much of that podcast that you did with him.

And I mean, I'm... You were saying Vandale would be one of your three favorites. Those things do change every time we talk. We would have different ones, thinking differently. But Condit's absolutely one of my favorites. Yeah, he's a tough, tough guy. That fifth round with Lawler was just insane. I thought he won that fight.

It was very close. Very close fight. Very close fight. That one, yeah, I mean, what I thought was beautiful, it didn't really fucking matter to him. Like, he was seeking that fight, and he had that fight and he had that fight and what three guys sitting at the side think it doesn't take anything away from the 25 minute brilliant experience that he had that will affect him positively for the rest of his life yeah you know and would he like to do it again maybe but maybe not maybe that was you know i don't know man he's only got a few more left in him i think yeah you

know i think carlos is a really smart guy and i think he's also got a lot of other things that he could do with his life he's very intelligent and what made him such a great fighter would make him great at anything he chooses to do. And I think he's got a realistic perception of how much longer his body can go through those kind of training camps and those kind of fights. Yeah. I mean, Andy Sauer was his first. That's insane. That's insane. And he loved it.

Yeah, I know. I saw that. He said it was his first. That's insane. That's insane. He loved it. Yeah, I know. I saw that. He said, you know, it was such a great experience for him. He gave me one of the great quotes when I was trying to figure out more about fighting. And it was actually relevant to what we're saying about Dominic Cruz and you're talking about. We showed the footwork drills and how he moves. And I asked Condit because he's like that and he's very special you know and i said uh when you're doing that are you when you go into fight are you working with pre-planned sequences so you'll run sequence

a twice or three times on robbie and when he starts reacting to sequence a you'll trick him with sequence b are you running these things are you improvising what's happening and the way he put it was brilliant he said some of the time i'm reading the sheet music and i'm just reading the sheet music and playing it and other times i just go off on a solo and I just improvise. And Stephen Thompson, McGregor, Cruise, Holly, that's what the best are doing. They have sheet music. Some nights the sheet music is going to be killer. Everybody's going to applaud.

It's going to be fantastic. Other times you've got to go off on some crazy jazz odyssey to make it work. And sometimes it's a bit of both. Well, that was a big thing with Anderson, just recognizing where those patterns were and being able to create something in the moment. Yeah, yeah. What do you think about Anderson versus Bisping? Like I was saying, Roy Jones Jr. is one of his favorites.

And you saw what happened to Roy Jones when he got older. It will happen eventually. Is it now? Or is it in a year? Or is it in a year? Or is it in five years? It's going to happen. I mean, I played a troll game with Anderson Silva, and not with him. But Sherdog used to ask for predictions.

And I just picked against Anderson on every one because everybody was picking Anderson. I thought it was funny. I mean, Stefan Bonner is going to defeat Anderson Silva and be considered the greatest. It was comedy. So people, friends who know me or people who follow our channel know that. So when I say I think Bisping's going to win,

they think I'm just still playing that. But I do probably think that when we picture Anderson Silva, we're picturing him in there against Forrest in the greatest moments. And that's not what I expect him to be. I don't expect him to be like that anymore. The fact that he was one of the greatest fighters of all time and brilliant and beautiful to watch and did incredible things.

That's not diminished in any way. What's fucked up is that wasn't that long ago. What's really crazy about him was Stefan Bonner was like, what was that? 2013? Yeah, 12 or 13 yeah 12 or 13 so four years ago he was the wizard he was the greatest of all time now he's barely hanging on he took a whole year off he fought Wyman broke his leg in half right took a whole year off but also broke his leg and then tested positive after the Diaz fight. Took that year off.

So he's in some weird place right now. We don't know what his body's going to be like. We don't know. Bisping's accusing him of taking steroids his whole career. That could be partly gamesmanship or he might know something. He might. I don't know. All of those things hint to me, point towards not expecting him to be his best.

If he's not his best, Michael Bisping is the most underappreciated, underrated, undervalued by his opponents. Tough, fundamentally really good. He's not going anywhere. He's got hard, smart punches. Not knockout punches, but enough to make you aware. Everything he does is intelligent, well-placed. He can get emotional, and that might be something Anderson will want to play with. But, I mean, I just don't—I'm not imagining Anderson Silva from his highlight reels.

I'm imagining a guy who had his leg broken in half, lost twice, 100% of the fights he's had since then, which was the Diaz fights. He didn't have brilliant performances. So we haven't seen him have really a brilliant performance since Yushin Okami, years back. Now, could he come out and be mind-blowing? That would be amazing. Yeah. Well, Bonner was his last fight before.

I guess I'm kind of undervalued. But Yushin was a spectacular performance. And he had many of them. And just because I picked against him for a comedy, I don't want my friends of ours or people who watch Fight Network to think I don't like Anderson Silva. He's 40. Yeah, exactly. He's 40. Yeah, exactly. He's 40. Unless you're on some shit, 40 is 40. And it's hard to

be on shit now. Almost impossible. Almost impossible. Listen, Robin, we ran out of time. Those three hours. Just ran through three hours. It's crazy. We just... And we did it. Thanks, brother. We gotta do this more often. Let me know when you're in town again. Let me know when your breakdown of Conor McGregor and Rafael dos Anjos goes live. I'll did it. Thanks, brother. We've got to do this more often. Yeah, thanks a lot, man. Let me know when you're in town again. Let me know when your breakdown of Conor McGregor and Rafael Dos Anjos goes live.

I'll tweet it. We'll get it out to people. Thanks, brother. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it very much. Cheers. All right, folks. See you guys on Sunday with the Fight Companion.

Much love. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.