The Joe Rogan Experience - #900 - Joseph Valtellini

Episode Date: January 18, 2017

Joseph "Bazooka Joe" Valtellini is a former world kickboxing champion, who currently can be heard doing color commentary for Glory Kickboxing.

And we're live. What's up Joe? Good to see you man. I'm pumped to be here. I'm like a little kid here right now. Me too man. Smiling around and loving it. Well I'm excited. There's a big glory event this Friday in Los Angeles. I'll be there. And you got two world titles right? Yeah two. Is it two world titles? Two have Israel. Jason Willness and Israel Edison, yeah. That's a wicked fight. Wicked fight. Yeah, and then you're looking at Matt Embry, another Canadian kid, against Dutch beast Robin van Roosmalen. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. That's on the card, too. That's going to be, yeah. That's on UFC Fight Pass.

Very exciting. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so psyched that the UFC and UFC Fight Pass is embracing glory. It's super exciting for me. I think so. And it was that huge collision card in Germany.

You had Rico versus Botter. Yeah. And UFC ran that pay-per-view for us. Oh, really? Yeah. No kidding. That was the first time the UFC has run anything other than UFC. Wow.

So that's huge, man. That's, for us, a big accomplishment for kickboxing. Well, we've talked about it in this podcast. We were just talking about it a couple minutes ago. I think kickboxing, especially high-level kickboxing like glory, is one of the most exciting sports in the world. And it perplexes me and many other people why it's not more exciting. That's crazy.

Because it's not hard to understand what's going on. One of the things about MMA that is very important to me is when the fights go to the ground, I have to explain step-by-step what's going on. Because otherwise, people that don't know ground fighting, they're all of a sudden like, why is he tapping? What's going on? You don't see exactly what's going on. But when someone explains it to you,

you see it. With kickboxing, it's pretty obvious. It's pretty obvious. You have kicks and punches and knees. Yeah, just people getting smashed. I don't know. I don't get it. I seriously don't understand. Dana White has a really good theory He thinks that pka karate from like you remember the the 1980s when they used to have those pka karate matches on ESPN Okay, yeah, when they wore the karate pants and the big booties. Yeah, and they're bouncing around Yeah, it was really just sloppy boxing with like some shitty kicks, but that's what even American kickboxing

That's like they have a kick rule So what would happen and they would throw eight kicks in the beginning of the round and then all of a sudden they'd box for the rest of the round. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And for whatever reason, and above the waist as well. Which I think, one of the things about kickboxing as opposed to the traditional

martial arts or like taekwondo or karate is like, as soon as you start adding leg kicks, like it changes the whole game. It's a totally different game It changes everything and we were talking before this fight about your fight for this podcast rather But your fight with Raymond Daniels, which is one of my favorite fights ever Thank you, because he is this traditional karate guy was a point fighting champion and he has wicked kicks He's just one of the most spectacular and dynamic guys in kickboxing

but your leg kicks and your constant pressure and just rock solid muay thai fundamentals you just chopped them down chopped them down and then eventually head kicked them yeah it's that those movement fighters are very tricky and i think what made that fight super exciting was that old school ufc mentality you had two different arts you know battling to see which one was better and raymond Daniels was undefeated he was just knocking people out with spinning hook kicks every time he was fighting so you know as a smart intelligent fighter you got to put pressure and I remember we had a conversation about you know guys like Wonderboy Thompson why isn't his opponents calling someone like me to do it but you had a good point it takes a special fighter to really close distance and pressure like that

and to be able to execute a game plan with heavy low kicks like that. Yeah, you have to really have a high-level Muay Thai game to deal with a guy like Wonderboy the same way. Because Wonderboy is also real unusual in his use of the front leg. Like he is that sideways stance, and he kind of bends a little at the waist and throws all those wicked front leg sidekicks and round kicks. And on top of that, he's a really good puncher. He's good.

He's impressive. Yeah. The rematch is happening, isn't it, with Woodley? Yeah, yeah. It's going to be in March in Vegas. That's going to be crazy. Yeah, that's a good rematch. It is a good rematch, especially because Woodley was dominating that first round

with his wrestling and really never took him down again. So I was like, wow, this is crazy. Like, I wonder why he didn't take him down. And I asked him after the fight. He goes, I have no idea why I didn't take him down again. So it was just, he was just in the moment. He's just loving it, man. He's loving the moment, loving the experience.

It's exciting. So you now have taken some time off from fighting because of concussions. That's right. And tell me about that. So, yeah, it was actually, I think you were at my last fight. It was, I fought Mark DeBont, you know, rest in peace. I remember we talked about the passing. Yeah, what happened to Mark?

Did they find out what happened to him? I don't know. A lot of the stuff that's coming out is in Dutch and Dutch newspapers. And I'm asking all of the Dutch community kind of what's happening. And they don't really know. You hear different things and rumors, but I don't want to listen to rumors like that. I don't want to hear it from like a concrete source. And he just went missing and then they found his body. Then they basically found his body. Yeah. So why or who knows,

but he was a great fighter, bro. He was amazing. Excellent, excellent fighter, you know, and he was another guy, but boy, you know, know you look at him he looked like a computer programmer yeah you know you know what i mean like it's it's uh it's interesting how looks can be so deceiving it's super super high level guy yeah but that was my last fight and um from there it was actually a really tough i never really opened up about it to be honest with you and it was uh a very tough experience um you, you got to think I just win the world title. I'm going home to Canada, which my concussion was pretty bad where I shouldn't have even gone on a plane home. And next thing you know, I'm at home and just the concussions got really bad. I had to be, you know, hospitalized for a few days and I was in a dark room for three weeks, man.

I could not get out of a dark room for three weeks. I couldn't walk. I guess something with the concussion started causing some neuron, some nervous, you know, nerve damage. Dang it. That could be me. Some of us. Yeah, so I started getting some nerve damage in my back. So I was like in a bed, man. Couldn't even look out. I had a little red light on my phone charger. It was too much. Really? Yeah, it was bad, man.

The red light on the phone charger would hurt your head. I couldn't even look at a thing. So it was at that point, it was bad, man. The red light on the phone charger would hurt your head. I couldn't even look at a thing. So it was at that point, it was like, man, it's like I just win this world title. And it was a really tough time. And this is actually the first time I've really opened up about it. But it was a tough experience. And being in that down state where you're basically in a dark room for three weeks, doctors were just handing me over a shit ton of percocets

and oxys to kind of deal with the pain and it was a it was a tough time man and it really i think what was the hardest was what was happening mentally i'm sitting there being like man i just want a world title i want to get back in there i want to you know do so much in this sport and my goal was to be a legend in this sport but you know and then it got to the point I saw my family and how much it was affecting my family. And that's when I decided, you know what, let's put this on rest for a little bit. So you win the fight. And after the fight is over, was it immediately that you knew something was wrong? Honestly, I had some adrenaline rush.

And I did the post-fight press conference. Everything was fine. Just when I got back to the hotel room, I was throwing up and couldn't leave my room. And I was surprised I'd even gone on an airplane home. The doctors in Canada were like, how the heck did you get on an airplane home? So it was scary times, man. And it took a lot of good mental strength to get out of it. And now I'm actually in a position where I'm super happy and I'm loving it.

I got that whole color commentary role with Glory, which has been incredible. That's great. It's great that you found a way out of it. But, man, I would imagine that when you were in that dark room and you couldn't even look at the light on a charger, that must have been really, really, really uncomfortable to deal with. It was tough, man. And it's just the way how can i explain it it gets emotional sometimes you know it was a time where it was like i finally achieved what i wanted and

no one has really um got into that level in the time that i did before i turned pro i only had 11 amateur fights i only had 11 amateur fights and right away into the pro ranks i only had 14 professional fights so you got to think in 25, I was able to get in there, become a professional, win the world title in the biggest kickboxing organization, all within 25 fights, amateur, professional combined. And how old were you when you won the title? 28. So you're still young.

I'm 31 right now. But think about that. The amount of fights you had, not that many in comparison to a lot of these Dutch guys that had not that many in comparison a lot of these Dutch guys that have 100 plus fights all the Thai guys have more it's crazy to think yeah, I think it's just bad luck sometimes and My style was a style that was really and man you could watch any one of my fights and you're gonna be entertained and I Understood the value of you know, it's more than just a sport. You got a win. You got a dominate you got to be exciting I think that's what i really did in my career and that's what i i got such a huge following behind me and you know it's just it was sucked because i had more i wanted to show put it

that way now when you see a guy like mayweather who's gone through a career and he's like 49 and oh and is probably one of the best if not the best defensive fighters of all time and then you see what you went through with your situation do you do you look at a guy like mayweather and say man maybe maybe i should take a different approach or maybe i should have taken a more safety first approach i'm torn between that because at one point uh if that's floyd mayweather right and you're looking at a guy who makes multi-millions of fight and, you know, he has that support around him. And whether it's a boring fight, and most people who watch, the casual fans who watch Floyd Mayweather think he's boring, right? But really,

if you're a skilled fighter and you understand what he's doing, you understand how incredible of an athlete he is. But I was just thrown in there with the Wolves, man. It was kind of like, hey, you're fighting Kareem Ghaji in your third glory fight. It's only his 100th professional fight, and that's my eighth. So what do I do? Do I play the point games with someone who's been in that ring, probably had 100 amateur fights, 100 professional fights? What do I do?

So, again, I have to go in there. I got to build a name for myself. You got to think Canada, there's no professional fighting in Ontario, Canada, where I'm from. So there's no professional fighting. I had no experience. So my approach was I got to bring the heat to these guys. Wow. I got to bring the heat. I got to be exciting and I got to finish. Just turn into a brawl just turn it in but again I wouldn't use brawl yes yes yes people always say oh you're a brawler you're aggressive like no I'm a technician and actually when I'm coming forward and I'm stalking you I'm waiting to counter kick I'm waiting to use my low kicks I'm waiting to counter you so it's very calculated I

wouldn't say brawling yeah that's probably not the right word, but you turn them into very violent encounters. Always. Yeah. Always. Now, when you watch high-level kickboxing like Glory, and then you see what's going on in MMA, where I think the level of striking is certainly advancing, you're getting better and better strikers, but it's really not at the same level that you're seeing in world champion kickboxing. Yeah, it's totally different. And people got to understand it's a totally different sport.

The way you would fight in kickboxing, you're not going to fight the same way in MMA. Right. I mean, there's takedowns, and there's a lot of very successful kickboxers who don't do well in MMA. A lot don't, because they keep that traditional Muay Thai stance

where they stand very tall, and they're fighting very tall, and of course the wrestler's going to take you down. Right. An example of a good Canadian striker is Shane Campbell. Shane Campbell fights in the UFC, and he's got an incredible background in Muay Thai, but he stays true sometimes a little too much

to his Muay Thai roots on the striking. You've got to keep your hips back. You've got to move. It's a totally different game. You've got a 4-ounce glove, not an eight-ounce glove. So shit changes. Yeah, it also affects your offense, too, when you're worried about takedowns. You're worried about all these different aspects

of the clinch, the cage. Have you ever fought in a cage? No. We've been debating a lot lately. I talk way too much about it. People getting annoyed because I think that they should do it on a basketball court. I really think the fight should take place on a large surface with no obstacles, nothing other than the fighters themselves. Did you like the pride ring over the octagon? No, I think rings are dangerous.

Like you saw the Bernard Hopkins, Joe Smith Jr. fight, right? Yeah, we came, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's a good example of why I think rings are dangerous. It's not often that that happens, where guys get knocked through the ropes, but it does fucking happen. And in Pride, I think, you know, they did a good job of standing outside the ring. Like, the Pride organization was good, where they had a bunch of guys waiting to catch people. But it's still weird.

It shouldn't have to come down to that. Exactly, exactly. But I get it for MMA, but for, like, a kickboxing, I can't really see it being done in a cage. I know I think you had him on John Wayne Parr. Yes. Yeah, he does caged Muay Thai. Yeah.

Yeah. What's your thoughts on that? Well, he loves it, you know, and he does it with MMA gloves too. Yeah. That's dangerous, man. You're putting good strikers on without a takedown. That's dangerous, man. Yeah.

It's a totally different thing, you know? I mean, it's a totally different thing with those little gloves too, right? Yeah. Have you done any fighting with little gloves? No, I was actually planning to fight a few times because before Glory there was nothing. You got to look. Originally it was K-1. And K-1 only had a lightweight division and a heavyweight division.

So everyone in between had to kind of pick a way. I actually fought in L.A. It was against a UFC fighter, Mehdi Baghdad. So I fought Mehdi Baghdad in L.A. It was against a UFC fighter, Mehdi Baghdad. Okay, sure. So I fought Mehdi Baghdad in L.A. And it was just I tried making for the first time 160. And it was hell. You're a big guy.

What do you walk around at? Well, my non-fighting walk around, about 200. When I was fighting, about 190, 195. So you were trying to lose 30 plus pounds. It sucked. It sucked. But I think that's the other thing. MMA guys know how to cut weight a little better than kickboxers do.

I think there's that wrestling. Growing up with that wrestling helps. Yeah, but I think it's more dangerous. Well, I know it's more dangerous with striking than it is with wrestling. And that's one of the problems with that wrestling mentality. It's your brain. Yeah, it is. Your brain's dehydrated. Yeah, but see, the advantage in MMA of being bigger,

it's not the same as the advantage of being bigger in striking. Because being bigger in striking is important. It's definitely a factor. But it's so much more of a factor when you're clinching. So much more of a factor when you take guys down. You lose a little bit of speed sometimes and that mobility yeah yeah um so when you were when you're thinking about sparring with little gloves what what differences did you notice or you think about fighting with little gloves it was more about moving more and i coach a lot of mma guys and

um i got you got to work in the ufc i got to corner twice in the UFC, which was pretty cool. I had Mitch Gagnon, and I got to corner Antonio Carvalho. Who was Mitch fighting? When he fought, he fought... Oh, I have to dig deep here. A young kid. I want to say he was Hawaiian, maybe. Knocked him out.

I helped train him for... He fought Wal-Wal Watson. Knocked him out with a left hook. Who was that other kid that he fought? But my last Antonio fight was against Derrick, Derrick Elkins. Sure. Tough guy. That was one of those fights where Antonio got caught, dropped, popped back up.

And Yves Levine called it off. And we're like, ah. Like it was an early stoppage. But yeah, he's protecting Antonio. So it's interesting that a guy like you, who is this very high level world champion kickboxer, learning how to fight and move with the small MMA gloves, it kind of shows you that striking in particular with MMA striking is still in a learning, growing phase. Oh, for sure.

Because guys like you come in and you are like guys like Duke Rufus a former world champion himself was really good at training guys and teaching guys Dwayne Ludwig's having a good job perfect example yeah and it's there's so many different methods and so many different styles that people are trying to incorporate I just think it's fighting is I think people focus fighting the way I look at fighting it's not actually what you throw. And I always get questioned, what's a good coach versus a bad coach? And a good coach is going to teach you positioning, distance.

He's going to tell you more of the philosophies and strategies around fighting. Where there's so many coaches and with MMA being so popular, every other corner has an MMA gym. And these guys are basically putting these fighters on pads, and they're just getting them tired. Jab, cross, hook, kick, jab, cross, hook, kick. More combination, combination, they get tired, and they think tired equals good, where there's so much more to fighting. Where's your distance control?

How are you moving? What are your counters? How are you countering? What are your defense? People think there's defense, but there's different types of defense you got head movement you got shield defense you got footwork for your defense you know you got parries so there's so many different ways but it does take good coaching in my opinion to take these guys to that high professional level and there's not enough of it yeah i agree and it's so hard for a young fighter

to find really solid coaching. And when you start out, you're really kind of lucky if you walk into a great gym your first time, because so few people, especially in the beginning, really know how to differentiate between a great gym and just a regular gym. It's very, very difficult to tell. It's hard. It's hard. But back to your original question, it's about mobility, in my opinion. Guys in MMA need to know how to move a little bit better. I think footwork is one of the most important things in fighting. And you've got to be able to adapt. If you're fighting a pressure fighter, you've got to be able to move and fight on angles.

If you're fighting a guy who now likes to move a lot, you've got to be able to pressure fight. So you have to have the coaching and the knowledge to be able to adapt accordingly. Yeah, and I think that a lot of people don't see when you're watching kickboxing or you're watching Muay Thai, you're seeing these guys are standing close to each other and they're throwing kicks. It's hard to tell exactly why they're doing what. It's hard to tell exactly why one guy is more effective. But once you see it, and once you practice it, and once you do it, then it all starts opening up to you

like a flower. Now, when a guy like you is doing commentary, it really helps. Because a guy who's been in there, a guy who's been a world champion, and you get to explain what this guy's probably thinking, what's going wrong. And it's sort of, I really like your commentary, man.

I've been trying, man. I'm still learning. Thank you. You do a great job. It means a lot coming from you. But you're explaining things in a way that's opening up the game to people. It opens up the sport where you go, oh, okay, now I know what to look for. Now I know what trends are happening.

See, I'm trying to find the balance still. I think that's a good, I think that's one of my challenges. If I come in there and I start talking, you know, his left heel is about two inches, which is, you know, causing this to happen, and his distance control is off, he needs to slip off, like it's too much sometimes. So my challenge has been trying to kind of bring it down a little bit and try not to overly, try to over-educate. Yeah.

That's been my challenge. The other challenge is try not to use the same word all the time. What a good left hook. What a big left hook. I'm trying to change words, man. I need a thesaurus beside me and just try to write shit down or something, man. Well, I can tell you I've failed on all those exact same things. It's hard, man.

It's hard. Talk too much. Talk too much. Say the same words too many times. Call people too explosive. And then some people got mad for calm explosive or athletic Like how can you only talk about black guys you call them explosive and athletic? I'm like, okay This is white guys that are explosive and athletic too, but you can't tell me that certain guys aren't fucking explosive

But how you deal with it? Do you okay with it now? Like I mean you probably it's been hard for me man people come out and they take all your words seriously Yeah, You go online And people are like Ah you freaking don't know shit And they're talking crap And I was like Well they can't say that

Anybody who says That you don't know shit Yeah And you're gonna get that But I think they keep you On your toes man I really do I think so

I think for the most part The majority of respectful fans And they might see something That maybe you don't know That you're doing That might be annoying And if it's annoying to them It's annoying it might just it might be only annoying to 2% of the people

But it might there might be a way where you could eliminate that aspect of your commentary And I know I've worked hard on that yeah I think it's good I think all the online criticism as much as it's uncomfortable like a lot of it fucks a lot of fighters heads up man It kills people yeah, I've talked a lot of guys coaches that were like man Those trolls man. They fucked with his head. I'm like really and like yeah, he's always reading the comments and going on for That could be dangerous. Yeah, it's freaking dangerous. Yeah, I mean cuz you don't know who's making those things I mean that could be a 12 year old kid who's on a draw who's kicking his cat and you're reading this guy's words

Like as if it's gospel and you want to argue with them and guys get online, you don't know shit. And like, fuck your mother. What? My mother, you piece of shit. And then you think about it all day. It's harder than it. I thought commentary was going to be an easier job than I thought, but it's, I think it's harder than fighting right now because it's still new to me. I've only done 10 Glory shows. And I don't think it's official yet, but maybe I'll make it official here. But Glory signed me full-time next year. Oh, that's awesome. Glory's had huge shows.

I'm going to do 18 shows next year. Whoa. And I don't know if you – I don't know how much you know about my life, but I'm also a full-time high school teacher. You are? Yeah, man. No kidding. So literally my morning, I teach phys ed.

I teach at a special education school. So I work with kids with special needs, behaviors, man. No kidding. So literally in my morning, I teach phys ed. I teach at a special education school. So I work with kids with special needs, behaviors, autism. So I teach phys ed to them. So that's 9, 9, like 8. What time do we start? 8.55 to 3.30. Then from 3, I have an hour to eat my lunch or my dinner at that point. And then I have my own gym, bazooka, kickboxing, and MMA.

And so you teach classes after that? I train and I teach classes a couple times a week, but we have a big program. Our gym's huge. It's big. It's popular. So it's non-stop. And then at night I go home and I have to do commentary. What a bunch of lucky kids to have a guy like you as a coach. That's amazing. But I never really

got to reach my full potential in all the things I wanted to do with kickboxing. But this is where it's happening. Glory having me full-time allowed me to take a year leave from teaching. And again, if you look at my Instagram, you could already see the difference, man. I want to educate people. I want to get people hooked to Glory, hooked to this sport. So I'm posting training videos, training tips.

I got Chris Camozzi just commented on one of my videos being like, Hey, man, keep up the drilling. I love the drills. I had John McDessie just private my videos being like, hey, man, keep up the drilling. I love the drills. I had John McDessie just private message me saying like, hey, man, good stuff. I've been following you. So it's just getting that word out, man, that kickboxing is the shit and glory is where it's at. Yeah, sometimes it's just a matter of like staying the course and continuing to put out content. And we've played a bunch of your stuff on here too.

That's been huge. You just posted something. I just got like almost a000 new Instagram likes and follows. So thank you, man. Oh, you're welcome, brother. So now that you are in this position as Glory Commentator and you've recovered from your concussion, do you have any thoughts in your head of fighting again?

To be honest, there's more money doing commentary than there is in the ring. And that's where kickboxing is still at. There's still not enough finances to make it worth. But it also comes down to, is any money worth health at that point? Right. You can make $10 million a fight. But if you don't remember that fight after and you don't recover from brain injuries again, what do you do? I was having this conversation with some guys this week that are not fighters.

And they were asking me about certain fights where people got knocked out. And, you know, how come, you know, when they came back, you know, they weren't as good. And my take on it was you never know how someone's going to recover from a loss. You don't know physically. And your case is a perfect example. We're talking about a fight you won where you won the world title. We didn't get knocked out and got got knocked down but not knocked out yeah and you still had this concussion issue and when someone would look at you like right now you talk great you look fine doesn't

look like there's anything wrong with you people would be like oh he's fine why can't he fight but you know what man there's it takes uh and i'm going to be honest with this whole recovery period and it it takes a lot out of you. You really have to find something deep inside of you. You have to find that mental strength to be, you know what? Because a lot of what people don't understand with concussions comes depression. And depression is a big side effect. Depression is a big side effect of concussions.

So a lot of these guys that you don't see it, yeah, they just get knocked out and then they're forgotten about. Those guys go home, they're depressed, their brain chemistry is all mixed up, their brain's not recovering the same way. So it's actually hard. And these fighters are at home probably crying themselves to sleep. They have headaches every day. But they just don't, there's not enough education

on what these guys are going through and suffering with. And I know you're really big on it, but one of the big things that has helped me, and we can branch off on this, is the use of CBDs for brain injuries. That's been incredible for my recovery. Yeah, CBD is a non-psychoactive compound that's in cannabis. And it's a crazy thing that's going on here in the States. I don't know how you guys treat it up in Canada, but it's essentially being turned into a Schedule 1 drug now, even though it's not psychoactive. Well, it's 100% shenanigans by pharmaceutical companies.

It's 100% influenced by these people that stand to lose money because CBD oil helps a lot of people with inflammation, a lot of people with chronic arthritis. They're saying cancer has a potential to cure cancer. I don't know. There's not enough studies, but hey, it's doing good things. It certainly helps treat it. It treats inflammation.

And inflammation, apparently, if you talk to doctors, they'll tell you it's a huge issue. And one of the biggest issues when it comes to diseases, discomfort, and things like arthritis again, and headaches. You know, like when you're taking a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for a headache, like if you're taking an Advil or an ibuprofen, what you're taking is something that reduces inflammation. I mean, that's what it's for. And CBD oil does the same thing, but it's natural. It's healthy. It's not bad for you. And it doesn't get you high.

It's not like something's going to fuck you up at work. healthy. It's not bad for you. And it doesn't get you high. It's not like something's going to fuck you up at work. It's been crazy because when I was going in that dark room there for three weeks, I literally, doctors were giving me like six to eight Percocets a day. And they were giving me two muscle relaxants from my back pain. So what happens? What's going on with your back? I don't know. Something with the nerves from my brain because it must have damaged some of the inflammation and it was causing like this back pain that I couldn't even get out of bed with. So they were something with the nerves from my brain because it must have damaged some of the inflammation, and it was causing this back pain that I couldn't even get out of bed with. So they were giving me all of these things to cope with it,

and then all of a sudden I got my sisters and my family to do some research. At that point, man, I would have taken anything. You could have given me coke, heroin, acid, you name it, I would have taken it to recover. Because those pills, they were messing me up. I was going through, like, I was living in a cartoon world in that dark room i had no idea what was going on i was tripping out and then it got to the point where i was like listen i've been i got people to research and they said hey these cbds help my family did all the research and they ended up getting me some cbd stuff and so how did in what form did you take it um i got it as a as an oil and so did you just take it on drops in your tongue yeah i, I put it underneath my tongue, basically, kind of thing.

And I was able to cut out all of those Percocets and everything just with CBD oil. In how long of a time? Right away. Right away? Right away. I stopped because, again, with those concussions and brain injuries, a lot of times you develop insomnia. So I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't eating much.

What is CBDs and cannabis good for? Munchies. Munchies. And sleeping. And it was eating much. What's, what is CBDs and cannabis good for? Munchies. Munchies and sleeping. So, and it was good for my recovery. So it's, it helped manage to get off all of those painkillers. And now I'm able to, you know, be healthy and control my brain headaches and stuff without having to take ibuprofen and Advils. Are you still getting headaches? Uh, they come. Yeah. They're still there. And you gotta, I'm working three full-time jobs. Right. If you're not, even if your brain is healthy and you're working three full-time jobs, you're probably going to get a headache or two throughout your day.

Yeah. But when you get a headache, it's a different experience. It's a different one. Because you're also, you know, you're so aware of where it can go. Yeah. It's scary. So it's been helping, man. And I know you have, it's on my list to watch.

But because I was explaining, everyone's like, yo, it's on my list to watch, but, uh, cause I was explaining, everyone's like, yo, you got to tell Rogan about your experience with CBD. And, um, I haven't got to watch it. I think you wrote, it was a 2007. You came out with the union. Yeah. That was, um, that was a documentary by, uh, my buddy Adam who had, um, he lives up in BC and that whole area is essentially run by the marijuana industry, even though marijuana is illegal. So they made this documentary explaining how without marijuana, your entire economy is fucked. Like it's this underground economy and they call it the union. And so it was a really, really good documentary. It's on my list.

And then he went on to make The Culture High high which is also an excellent documentary that he made After watch I'll watch both well. It's a you know we've been hoodwinked in this country unfortunately in all countries now because of the influence of America we've been hoodwinked by the Propaganda that they came up with in the 1930s which wasn't even about pharmaceutical drugs back then it was really about the paper industry Huh yeah, it's William Randolph Hearst, who was a real creepy guy, and he was the reason why Orson Welles made that movie Citizen Kane. He was the inspiration for that movie. Okay. About one guy who was kind of dominating the world with his

influence. And William Randolph Hearst didn't just own newspaper companies, he also owned paper mills and he owned forests, these enormous forests where they would chop down trees and make paper with them. And in the 1930s, they came out with a product called a decorticator. And a decorticator is a machine that allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber very easily. Because hemp is a very unusual plant. And that like this table that we have here, this is oak. And hemp is a very unusual plant. And that, like, this table that we have here, this is oak. And oak is a very hard wood. Well, hemp is as hard as oak, but it's way lighter.

It's like a freaky alien plant. Like, if you pick up a hemp stalk, like, this is a decorticated that they're, this is like a modern one, I guess. So you throw the hemp fibers in there and it grinds them up. Which, by the way, hemp is still federally illegal, even though it's not psychoactive. And there's so much stupidity that's all attached to this one amazing plant. I always thought it was just because it was under so much THC. It has to be under 1% THC or is that a myth? It's not.

I don't think that's it. To make it legal to sell or something along those lines? I don't know. You can grow it in some states, but the thing is like federally. Federally, it's still illegal, but they're trying to change that. It's just slow and painful. And again, it's all the propaganda from the 1930s. So William Randolph Hearst, who owned newspapers, they came out with this decorticator and then

Popular Science Magazine had this cover. See if you can find it, Jamie. Hemp, the new billion-dollar crop. Because of this, see, they used to use hemp way back in the day. Like the drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp. The sails that they used for boats were all made out of hemp. All that stuff was out of hemp. In fact, canvas, the word canvas comes from the word cannabis.

So the Mona Lisa is painted on hemp. In fact, canvas, the word canvas comes from the word cannabis. So the Mona Lisa is painted on hemp. So they came up with that. And then when Eli Whitney came up with a cotton gin, cotton was more effective to use. Yeah. So they were going to use it for clothes and you see it on the cover of popular science magazine. It was on the cover though, Jamie, see if you, is it popular mechanics? Is that what it is? Anyway. So they used to use it for parachutes. They used it for all these different things. But then when Eli Whitney came up with the cotton gin, it was easier for them to make clothes out of cotton. Because hemp requires a lot to break down the fibers and turn them into cloth. Yeah.

Because it's a crazy plant. Yeah. And it makes this unbelievable paper. Like hemp paper is so superior to this paper that we all use. Like this paper that we use is shit. It rips so easy. Hemp paper is really hard to rip. It's a quality thicker.

But it weighs the same. It looks the same. It feels the same. But it's just a better fiber. So instead of William Randolph Hearst embracing this, he would have lost millions of dollars because he would have had to replant these forests and turn them into hemp. He decided to go the other route and just start making propaganda against hemp. So he started calling it marijuana.

See, marijuana was never a name for cannabis. Marijuana was a wild Mexican tobacco. They took this name from this wild Mexican tobacco. They just called it hemp. They started talking about this new drug that's making white women get raped by mexicans and black people nice plant wizards fight wartime drug peril look at that we need hemp lots of it for corkage but hemp means marijuana too can scientists take the drug menace out of this useful plant hilarious so all this shit came from this one asshole

one asshole and harry anslinger who was the uh the guy in charge of uh well you know they originally got a lot of people that were involved in the alcohol prohibition and once alcohol prohibition was done they needed something else to fight so they said well look we got something right here which alcohol probably does more damage to your body than oh it does trust me i was drunk as fuck monday night i think monday night i might have black i might have been blackout drunk. People tell me. You feel like shit for like three days probably.

Oh, yeah. I feel like shit today a little bit. But so this propaganda, they're still fighting this. They're literally still fighting this. Well, that's kind of like it's a little different, but why kickboxing, MMA, it was so hard to get into Ontario. Stupid, you know, legislature and stuff from years ago that the language ruined. So it just ruins things.

What was the language? It's something about the belts. Like, we can't get kickboxing or Muay Thai in Ontario, Canada. Because of belts? No, it's because of some language inside, like, legal documents. Within that language, it said something about you cannot perform kicks. That's why the UFC had so much

difficult time to get into Toronto. But it's in there now. Is kickboxing? Not yet. Kickboxing's not in Toronto? Above the waist only. You can't do low-kicking fights. What? Or professional Muay Thai in Ontario. That's insane.

All old shit from years ago that, you know, the commissioner was following from long time ago. And even if you ask fighters, like I had a conversation with Matt Embry who's fighting Robin Van Roosmalen. And we were like, I don't even know why. We don't even know. It's just, it's been in the, it's in that legal document, the way it's written and the terminology screwed us up.

But how is that the case when you can still have UFC fights and they're allowed to low kick in UFC fights? I think it comes to money. Probably comes down to money. Wow. Everything else. That's fucking crazy. It's ridiculous.

But you've got to think, too. We're off topic, but look at the Canadian kickboxing champions that have come out of Canada. You had Simon Marcus. You had, which again, I know one of your favorite fights was Joe Schilling. Yeah, my god, what a fight. That was insane. Yeah, and then went to the fourth

round, Joe knocked him out. What a crazy fight. Yeah, you had Gabriel Varga, you had myself, now Matt Embry, Robert Thomas from canada and we're producing all of these crazy athletes and we don't even have a professional system and it's crazy because there hasn't been one u.s glory champion well at one point in time before mma or before the ufc really got a foothold in brazil The Canada market was the biggest market for MMA.

It's huge. Outside of the United States. The one show we had at the Rogers Center there? 70,000 people. It was gigantic. 60,000, whatever the fuck it was. It was nuts.

It was insane. Yeah. And that was also, a lot of it was because of George St. Pierre. And George being such a great representative of Canada, a great representative of the UFC, and a great champion.

People flock to him. It's one of the things about Canada is how loyal Canadian citizens are towards their fighters. Even if you watch Toronto Blue Jays or Toronto Maple Leafs, man, we're passionate fans. That's why kickboxing has to come there. If we're going to build it, there's talks about it. So can glory make something happen here?

There's talk about it. Is this the rules here? The fouls. Administering a kick to the leg. Spinning back fists are illegal. Striking the face with any part of the arm. Elbows are illegal. Chopping to the back of the neck.

Oh, they watch too much Flintstones. Fucking karate chop. Striking a blow to the groin area. Okay. Butting with the head. What's the top one, Jamie? Number one? Striking a blow with an elbow or a knee.

You can't strike a knee to the body. See, I still don't get how it works. Oh, that's hilarious. But how did the UFC? I think it's what it's got to be. I think you need a big chunk of money to kind of even get the commission to look at you. So look at this. Professional boxing where blows may be struck with both the fists and the feet. That is weird.

So this is the same laws that apply to boxing. They use for kickboxing, but you can only kick with the feet. Now, what if you kick someone with a head kick and you hit with the shin? Is it illegal? They don't even know that you're shin kicking. They think you're kicking with feet. That's hilarious. Sweeping above the ankle.

You can't even sweep someone. It's ridiculous. Above the ankle. So you can't even have a fucking, you can't even sweep someone. It's ridiculous. Above the ankle. So you can't sweep right. You can sweep shitty. Yeah, that's right. You can fight shitty, but it's okay. Yeah, it's crazy.

Intentionally using the knee as a block. You can't block with the knee. You can't check. Well, you can't even kick below the waist, so I guess there's no need to block a low kick. But what if you wanted a body kick? You can't block with a knee. You can't kick below the waist, so I guess there's no need to block a low kick. But what if you wanted a body kick? You can't block with a body kick? Oh, my God. Intentionally evading contact.

Boy, they got a lot of fucking wacky rules. Striking a blow with an open glove. Well, the commissioner who was kind of really strict to this is now out, so we'll see what changes. Using abusive language. No Nick Diaz fights in Canada, folks. disobeying the referee going down intentionally intentionally using the knee as a block wow extending the legs for the purpose of preventing an opponent from kicking what yeah what don't even ask what in the fuck is that yeah it's messed up how weird is that extending the leg for the purpose of preventing an opponent from kicking. I'm guessing this was written in 1990

But that doesn't even make any sense like you can't even use a tape then like if you wanted to extend your leg like a Tape is to extend the leg. I mean you're front kicking a guy you're pushing him off You could say that that would like I've been to one of my One of the guys I trained is Troy Sheridan. He fought an above-the-weight kickboxing fight professionally. He actually fought Another old UFC fighter Jesse Ronson. He think he's fought twice on the UFC and before he got released Jesse Ronson Who was Oh John Eaves Theriault? He was one of the best known Canadian kickboxers. Yeah, he was a bad motherfucker, man.

Above the waist, yeah. Above the waist kickboxer. He was the man back in the day. And he was one of the few guys that was like really exciting and would knock guys dead. I didn't get to watch a lot of it, but I've done my research and watched a few of his fights after. And that's crazy. I forgot about him for a long time until just this conversation. Well, you got to think Rufus, Duke Rufus' brother.

Sure, yeah. Rick Rufus, yeah. Rick Rufus was one of the most popular, I would say. Oh, for sure. Well, he was so flashy, too. He could do so many wild techniques inside the octagon. Did you ever see the fight where he fought a Thai fighter? Yes, I did. Yeah, those low kicks, man. That was an exciting fight, too. He could do so many wild techniques inside the octagon. Did you ever see the fight where he fought a Thai fighter? Yes, I did. Yeah. Those low kicks, man.

That was an exciting fight too. But that was a first time. Lawrence Kenshin did a breakdown of that. His stuff's good. He posted one with mine and Mark DeBond. Yeah, he put a nice little, the way I set up that high kick, he's good. Yeah, he's very good. And it's interesting because that fight essentially changed a lot of people's

ideas about low kicks. Because even Duke Rufus, like they interviewed Rufus after the fight, I think he was like 19, and he's like, well, it doesn't take any talent to just kick the legs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. It was crazy. Everybody had this weird idea. You gotta ask him about that. Oh, I've talked to him about it many times now. What did he say?

Now he's a huge low kick proponent. He became a world multi-champion. He loves his low kicks. I guess seeing his brother at such a young age. But that opened up everyone's eyes to low kicks. Oh, yeah, man. But the low kicks, see, people think my style or the low kick style is this new thing. It's actually a really old concept that was kind of forgotten about.

And then there's only a few people that came and stuck true to that low kick style. I think it's underrated, especially in MMA. And I think I'm going to bring it up about MMA. Everyone's like, yeah, but the takedowns. A good low kick is based off timing. If I'm going to sit there and I'm going to lead with a low kick against a wrestler, absolutely. He's going to take me down every time.

But I think it's the timing of the low kick that people need to understand. If someone's exiting backwards, that's your time for the low kick. So if you put, especially in MMA where people can't really stand in the pocket, they move and they exit. As soon as they get outside of punch range, that's perfect low kick timing. You'll get so many free low kicks on MMA guys, and their legs aren't strong. MMA guys aren't used to that body damage that kickboxers are.

And I remember my coach coached Gary Goodridge. And Gary once told me, he's like, when he fought both kickboxing and MMA, he came back and said, he's like, I knew I can go to the after party when I fought MMA. But he goes, and after a kickboxing fight, he's like, I'm not getting out of my bed. You got to think how much shin to shin kickboxers go through compared to an MMA fight. MMA but he goes and after a kickboxing fight he's like I'm not getting out of my bed you gotta think how much shin to shin kickboxers go through compared to an MMA fight how often do you see a leg kick checked

in the UFC or it's getting better it's getting better but I agree with you and that's another thing that people always complain about me that I'm always calling for low kicks and saying I'd like to see more low kicks I'd like to see him kick his legs more but I think you're right, too, that it takes someone who understands Muay Thai

at a very high level to be able to pull that off and do it in combination. What you're seeing sometimes in MMA is you would see it a lot during the George St. Pierre era where guys were afraid to kick because George was so good at timing. Explosive. But again, who was he fighting against?

He wasn't fighting against a guy who actually Yeah, and we don't really see that many people like I mean you have a few in the division Did you say Jose Jose has spectacular leg kicks no doubt about and he was killing guys. Yeah Oh, yeah, I mean you look at the Uriah favor fight was horrendous I called that fight and afterwards, you know Uriah posted all these Instagram pictures and social media pictures. Of that purple leg? It was insane. Yeah.

He had one leg twice the size. Yeah. Yeah. I have a meme on my phone I keep sending, because a lot of times in sparring, I'm going to smash my guy's legs, and then I'll send him the picture of me, like, tag someone who doesn't know how to block a low kick, and I just keep sending that picture out, mess around with everyone.

But, yeah, it was brutal. Brutal. Now what happens to your leg? Oh, there's Uriah's leg. Ugh. Yeah. Yeah, he had to go in a hyperbaric chamber to try to lessen the injury,

try to heal the injury quicker. But people don't understand the damage they do. It's like, hey, if every time you punch, I smash your leg, you're not going to want to punch me. Yeah. And that's the timing I use so as soon as someone jabs you take the leg Because when someone punches they have to put their weight on their front leg and once you put your weight your weight on the front Leg you can no longer block at that point So if you watch any of my fights or guys with good low kicks they usually time the low kick off the hands

Because or the step because every time you step you got to be heavy on your On your front foot and that's the opportunity to hit that low kick So you want to look for that what I call free low kicks ones where they can't block so as they're exiting up or as they step in or You try to find those free ones when they're planted on their legs and they can't lift up their leg to block. Jamie put up See if you can find Joe's fight with Raymond Daniels. Because, like I said before, it was one of my, and I'm a big Raymond Daniels fan, by

the way. It's not a knock on him at all. I think he's awesome. And I think his style is very important. Because it's very important to know that there is a guy who can do the kind of stuff that he can do. It's incredible. He does that jump side kick, spinning back kick.

That was against Francois Hombach. Yeah. I mean, he does a lot of wild shit inside the octagon. And so this fight to me was a really important fight for just martial arts strategy and technique to see how a guy like you, who's a super high high level guy deals with a guy who's completely unorthodox in terms of traditional kickboxing techniques you know he's got a style that is impossible to emulate inside inside and again i fought kareem gaji over 100 fights nikki holtzkin over 100 fights i fought guys mark debon over 100 fights he was probably the fighter i was most scared to fight because of all this wild shit? I'm like, man, the last thing I want to be is part of a knockout reel of Raymond Daniels spinning hook kick, knocking me the frig out.

So, I mean, I was scared, man. So, at this point, even in round one, it was just like, what the heck is this guy going to do? I had no idea what the heck this guy was going to do. One of the things I really love about watching you fight, too, is you always have a very high guard. Very high guard, very good fundamentals. And even when you're doing those training sequences that you put on Instagram, everything you do, your guard is high. You're doing everything by the book. Solid basics.

The key. Who was your original trainer? My original trainer was Paul Minhas. And that was the one who trained Gary Goodridge through K-1 and Pride. But original trainer is Paul Minhas and that was the one who trained Gary Goodridge through K1 and Pride but yeah Paul Minhas he's the one who really developed my low kick style and I just you know was able to really put it together and showcase his strategy of low kicks. The way he used to explain it is that people think a low kick is a low kick but it's not. You got to think where on the shin are you landing the low kick, right?

If you land more of the lower part of your shin, that's more of a setup. You might want to use your low kick to set up your hands. You might want to have it as a feeler, just as a distraction. If you start landing higher up on the shin, those are more finished low kicks. The angle you throw it at, the timing you throw it at. So when Paul was training me, he would kind of classify like nine different low kicks based on where on the leg it's hitting and where on your shin you're landing. So there's so much more. It's like a jab.

There's up jabs. There's jab with your head off on angles. There's low jabs, high jabs. Each jab has a different purpose, and same thing with the low kick. You just lit him up with that leg kick, and you saw that little limp that guys start doing. Yep, see right there. Once you start landing these big shots to the legs, you slow him down considerably. What did you do to prepare for his movement and this front leg style?

Because he was throwing a lot of front leg sidekicks to your front leg it was Just this fight What a lot of people don't see when he fight it's a lot of it is ring control You can't just chase Raymond as you have to get him against the ropes You got a corner him and if you see when he blitzes I don't move back If you move back you give him an exit and an opportunity to escape. Where if you stay, see, when he blitzes, I stay right in his pocket

and it opens up the low kick. And you're forcing him to move backwards as well, which is very tiring. Yeah. Most people get way more tired moving back than they do moving forward. It seems like you're both fighting at the same pace, but he's doing more work. Well, this round was more of a feel-out round, and you to remember after this fight. I fought Nikki holds. Yeah

So a night it's 20 minutes later fucking crazy 20 minutes later. I'm not a fan of that I really am I per I personally don't you got to think your brain is still shook up from that first fight It's not fully recovered and in my opinion the best fighter doesn't necessarily come out on top and in tournaments too many variables yeah well it's crazy it's fun to watch it's it's exciting when you're watching it because it builds up to one eventual champion and you get to watch all these fights take place during the night but i think especially you're getting hurt and then you're recovering a little bit and then going back in again you're still busted up from the first fight i probably lost a good 10 years of my life after

that night but what are you going to do? Yeah but there used to be 8 man tournaments. Yeah. 8 man tournaments. That's 3 fights in one night. Did you fight Nikki Holtzkin twice? Just once. Just once. Just once. And one night you gotta think I got one of the knockouts of the year in this fight and I got the fight of the year

Nikki and I won fight of the year that year where we just sat and exchanged combinations for three rounds. No, it was, it was an awesome fight. Now there you see, like he's starting to limp. Now, did you bring anybody in that, that, that kicks like this, that throws those front leg sidekicks and the hopping kicks? You know what? It was very tough. I experimented with a Taekwondo guy and it just wasn't the same. And the problem is a lot of these karate guys, they can't handle that constant pressure. They're used to guys standing, keeping distance with them, letting them kick. But I was too much of a bully for those guys. I was able to just stay in the pocket.

They'd try to throw spinning kicks. I would just push them on the ground. I was like, they couldn't handle the constant strong pressure style. pushed them on the ground. It was like they couldn't handle the constant strong pressure style. It's definitely interesting to watch how it's so much more. Yeah, there it is over and over again. You're seeing him limping now, and you're noticing him as you're fighting.

You're noticing that, and you keep hitting that same spot. Now he's moving. He's standing southpaw now. You can tell he can't. Yeah. You can tell he's done. He mixes it up a little bit. I mean, he does switch his stances, but you can see he's really trying to protect that left leg now. He's keeping it back.

Now, when you did bring in those guys, was there anything that they could show you about how to avoid those kicks or how to move away from them? It was more just kind of like, hey, this is kind of the distance and the setup. These are the kind of few things you need to look at. But I was really in my fight career, which I kind of have a and the setup these are the kind of few things you need to look at but i was really uh uh in my fight career which i kind of have a different philosophy now uh now that i'm a coach a lot more and i'm looking at fighting a little bit differently um but here i knew i was going to fight my fight he had to fight my way um if not he was going to be in trouble those three

in a row boom boom boom chopping, chopping at that leg. To me, this is like the fight that I show people. When I show people the difference between a really good Muay Thai fighter who's fighting a guy who throws a lot of flashy stuff but doesn't really know the low kick game. And he throws those things, but there's not a lot of threat outside those spinning attacks. He does have that explosive left hand, but good defense. You can shut that down really good. Well, he was a great karate point fighter, but his boxing has come a long way since this fight. I think he learned a lot about a lot of things in this fight.

But his hands weren't the big threat. That's one of the things that differentiates him from Wonderboy. Also, Wonderboy's obviously fighting with smaller gloves, but Wonderboy has nasty hands. So if Wonderboy and Raymond Daniels were to fight in kickboxing, who wins? That's an interesting question. I mean, Wonderboy is undefeated in kickboxing.

But he doesn't kickbox anymore. Those are the other things I don't know. I'm like, you hear about this guy. He's like, oh yeah, he's undefeated as a kickboxer. It's like, hey, we're the same weight. If you're undefeated, so how come we never heard of each other or saw each other? What happens with a lot of these guys? And with kickboxing, there's so many different organizations.

So you'll see guys that will come around and say, hey, I'm a 10-time world champion. I'm like, okay, where? I think there's one world champion that matters right now, and it's Glory. Right. So any other belt than that, to me, I don't think you're a world champion. Well, what about Lion Fight? What about Muay Thai? I mean, obviously it's a little bit different.

It's a different class, I would say. Muay Thai and kickboxing are very different. What do you like better? I'm a straight kickboxer. And why do you like kickboxing better than Muay Thai? Because I like to rely on pace, more aggression, and more... I'm a combination style fighter. So I like to always mix up kicks and punches, punches and kicks.

I fought two full rules Muay Thai fights. One of them was a French fighter who... It was, again, my sixth professional fight. It was his, like, 70th. And he came in and he was just just i beat him up on the outside but as soon as he came close he clinched up with me elbows elbows elbows and he split my head open six weeks later i fought and it's actually um on youtube i fought a meddy begdad that would be a cool one for you to watch um and i put a little clip on if you want to find it after this one it's literally like I made it into like a two minute clip

and it's just beating the crap out of him and he landed two elbows and I got like 30 stitches at the end of that fight covered in blood I got like a three inch gash in my head I had five stitches off my eyes he landed two elbows two strikes basically the whole fight

and those two strikes were the damaging ones which I mean okay it's cool I knew I wanted to be a I had two elbows, two strikes basically the whole fight, and those two strikes were the damaging ones. Wow. Which I mean, okay, it's cool. I knew I wanted to be a kickboxer, so I never focused on my elbows. Could I be a Muay Thai champion? Absolutely. But my focus was on kickboxing and at that point to get into the K1 Max.

Right. I wanted to fight the Zambidis. I wanted to fight all of the Boa Cows. I wanted to fight all of the, you know, the Bokows. I wanted to fight those guys. So my focus was always on kickboxing from the day I started. Well, that was the big organization. K1 was the big organization that kind of opened up kickboxing to the world, you know, and Japan did an amazing job of that. And then they had, of course, It's Showtime and It's Showtime ran for a while. They became Glory, right?

Yeah, there's part of it. And they shut down. Because the problem is there was a lot of problems happening in Holland. There was a lot of, like, illegal stuff happening. Illegal? Is this the finish right here? Yeah, this is, you're battering them now. Just the amount of shots.

That's it. Head kick. It's over. The amount of shots that he took to the legs. Now, when you were saying that MMA fighters, they don't have the toughness of the legs. They're not used to taking the punishment in the legs. What is the difference? Like, how does your legs get tougher from getting kicked?

Well, it's like if you look at martial arts in your body, your body is your armor. So you got to look at your body as armor. If you don't strengthen that armor, you're only as strong as your armor can hold, right? So if you're not training your body to get hit, you can't really take as much damage. So if you're constantly taking low kicks every day in training, you build up that endurance and that tolerance and that strength to be able to take hard low kicks. But a lot of guys, if you're not used to that, taking hard arm kicks. My first professional fight, I left with, like, welts on my forearm. My knees would be swollen. I couldn't even get my shoe on after the fight because everything was just so swollen.

And you just take so much damage on the body that eventually it hardens and it gets stronger. And, like, I mean, you got to look at our shins and our kickboxes and Muay Thai shins. We're going through bats, whatever you want. We're just constantly kicking things where in MMA there's not as much focus on conditioning and hardening the body because you don't need it as much. But what does condition the legs to take that kind of punishment? Just constant hitting. Use in years of training or getting someone to constantly lightly touch your legs, build up the tolerance.

You've got to build a strong armor to be able to withstand whatever damage. What I'm confused about, though, is what is the physical response that your body has to getting fixed in all those spots? Well, I know the shin, for example. Every time you shin, there's those micro fractures that then calcify, which then cause the shin to harden. And again, even if the difference between my right and left shin, my right shin is probably double the size of my left one

because I use my right shin a lot more. Really? Yeah. So, I mean, it's just constant years of training your body to do it. But what about the thigh? Like what about your quads and all the leg? I don't know. I wonder what it is.

Is it nerves? Are your nerves able to withstand the pain? Yeah. But it's a big difference. And it's weird because I've been doing it so long where I can usually stand in front of you, give you like little leg taps, and I can kind of see how hard your body is if you can withstand a low kick. It's a feeling mechanism. So you feel how they're responding?

You feel like how they're reacting? Well, yeah, how soft it is, how they put their weight, their pressure on it. You can tell. You can really tell. And when you fight someone, and that's where those guys that have 100 professional fights have that, there's a lot of wear and tear, but those guys have a body armor that really takes a lot

to try to damage, you know, those forearms or those leg kicks or, you know, it's just years of accumulated damage and the body hardens up. It is weird because like you see some of the ties that just blast each other and you're watching them low kick each other and you never see them limping. No.

You know, I mean, then you see this fight that you had with Raymond and you see like after you know, a minute, two in the fight when you kept chopping. There was one moment in the fight in the first round. I remember watching it live and you caught him with one low kick in the first round. I went, uh-oh, there it goes. You see that little dip?

You know, bam! And you see the little dip that their body gives? Like, oh, this is not good. And you've got to think, I've probably sparred with thousands and thousands of different MMA fighters, and as soon as we start sparring, I'll tap the leg once, tap the leg twice,

three times, and they're like, no, no, no, can you lay off the leg? I'm just like, okay, all right, cool. Yeah, I guess so. I'll just hit the leg twice, three times and they're like, no, no, no, can you lay off the leg? I'm just like, okay, alright, cool, yeah, I guess so. I'll just hit the other leg and if I don't hit the other leg, I'll hit your body. But I mean, yeah, it's a different type of body conditioning. Is there any way

to do it other than just getting kicked there? I mean, does anybody... I don't think so. Not that I know. I think it's just years of accumulation. Get guys to hit your leg. I've heard of dudes like rolling Coke bottles on their shins. I don't know if that I've tried to find research on that. I don't think so. I think it's just years of accumulation. Get guys to hit your leg. Rolling coke bottles on their shins. I don't know if that even works. I've tried to find research on that. I don't think so. I don't think so. I did it when I was young.

I'm like, hey, look at me. I'm putting a rolling pin over my shin, but I guess it kind of takes out the nerve damage a little bit. I don't know. The nerve endings. Try to numb them out a bit. I don't know. It is interesting. It's interesting because it's not it doesn't necessarily make sense like when it comes to the muscle of the of the thighs like

it's got to come down to nerve or it's not really bone that's getting stronger i don't know i would love to talk to a doctor who understands muay thai yeah you know like good do you know anybody that's like a doctor that trained i'll start i'll I'll find out. I'll tweet you out the answer, man. I'll find it. Yeah, because it definitely seems like, I mean, especially like we said, the ties and these guys that have 100 plus fights and you see them getting low kicked and it doesn't seem to affect them at all. I mean, it's landing.

It's an effective strike. But the difference between the way it would affect them versus the way it affect a person that's never been low kicked before. Yeah. It's interesting. It's the most underrated technique in all of martial arts, I think. I agree. Because until you've been low kicked, like once you get low kicked once, you go, oh,

Jesus. And you know, it's usually when you're at those parties and you're drunk, you're like, oh, those leg kicks don't hurt. Oh, my God. Those low kicks don't hurt. And then all of a sudden, they're like, just give him one. And I was like, no. You don't want one.

I was actually messing with someone once, and I was like, no. You don't want one. I was actually messing with someone once. And I was like, Bruce Lee had the one-inch punch. And I was like, I'll give you a one-inch low kick. And you won't walk for a month. And he didn't believe it. I'll give anyone, if anyone listening wants to have a one-inch low kick. How do you set it up? What do you do?

All I got to do is put literally my shin one inch away and just bang. Done. It's hitting the right part. You got to do is put literally my shin one inch away and just bang, done. It's hitting the right part. You got to know where to hit. So you would have like- A bent leg. Almost like you're throwing a kick, like a controlled kick and stopping at them. Yeah, right there.

And you stop right before. And I'll just go, boom, right on that part. I'm telling you, man. I'm telling you. One inch low kicks. I'm going to start it. You should. You should make a video about it.

The one inch low kick. Yeah, one inch low kick challenge. I bet you I'm going to start it. You should. You should make a video about it. The one-inch low kick. Yeah, one-inch low kick challenge. I bet you I'm going to do it. Now, you were saying earlier, and I wanted to go back to this, that your thoughts on fighting have changed from being a fighter to being a coach. How so? Because I think right now I had, when I was fighting, I had to have a one-dimensional approach.

What worked for me? And now as a coach, someone asked me the question. They're like, a new student who's very talented comes to your gym. He's not strong. He's not really as athletic as you. He doesn't have the training background as you. How do you make that guy a world champion? And I was like, huh, that's interesting.

I'm like, he's not big. He's not strong. So he's not going to be a great pressure fighter that's going to be able to withstand a lot of damage. So what happened? So I wanted to create a system of fighting that is kind of universal. I don't really want to have, I want to have a system in my fighting at bazooka kickboxing that you can go into a street fight, you can go into an MMA fight, you can kickbox. You've got to have that knowledge and the skill set to be able to fight everything. you've got to have that knowledge and the skill set to be able to fight everything.

And that's my goal as a coach right now is to make a universal system that can handle anything. So if you've got a pressure fight versus move, if you've got to keep distance, if you need to jab or box, you've got to be able to have it all. I don't agree anymore too much with a one-dimensional approach. But the one-dimensional approach was good for you as a fighter because you found out where your skills were more directed. The way I look at it is I was an exceptional case. I'm an exceptional athlete that was gifted with a strong body, strong mind, good dedication, very motivated. So it all worked in my favor.

But now I have a guy who's fighting amateur kickboxing. How do I train that guy to be successful? Do you think that that helps you as a fighter? Because I know a lot of jujitsu guys, they start coaching. And once they start coaching and teaching lessons, their game just jumps. It was being a color commentator. That helps a lot? Huge.

Like I got to show you like after whatever, I'll show you my notes on what I do. And I'd be interested to see your thoughts on it you write your own notes for for the events what notes as far as your fighter notes or do you are you now just experienced enough to know about the fighters it depends entirely on who the fighters are because many many times i'm watching a guy fight for the first time and if i've never seen someone before what i like to do is i like to watch some youtube videos of them i like to watch them fight. I read what their background is. So you do do a lot of research still, you have.

See, I say I do research. I say I don't do any research because I would have done it anyway. Yeah. Because, like, I'll do research for glory. I don't work for glory. Yeah, but you still want to. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you're a fan.

Yes. So, like, say if there's a big fight coming up like like here's a perfect example this this Holly home Jermaine Durand ame they're gonna fight for the UFC Yeah, I saw the way for that Yeah And what's interesting to me is Jermaine Durand ame is a multiple-time world Muay Thai champion and who's had a hard time dealing with the Clinch dealing people taking her down dealing with the other aspects of MMA. She's trying to find her groove. Dutch girl, right? Yes.

Dutch girl, nasty striker. Real tall, long. I saw her, was it UFC 200? Was she in that? Was it the Brazil card with Cyborg or something? She looked vicious. She's vicious. She's a very, very good striker. So what I'm curious, it's very interesting

because, you know, Holly, who looked like a fucking dynamo when she fought Ronda. Because Ronda fought the absolute worst kind of fight that you could fight with Holly. Run right at her. Go straight. Go at her. I mean, she wanted to bully her. And you just can't.

You know, Holly's so good at evasion, so good at using angles, and so good at stopping and then countering. Straight punching. Straight punching. And that weird oblique kick that a lot of the Winklejohn guys like to do to the thigh. Do you use that kick at all? I don't really know. It's a weird kick, right? A lot of guys use that kick.

I mean, there's some guys that really know how to land that well. And I'm starting to see it. I'm thinking, man, it's an interesting kick. But the Winklejohn guys in particular, or gals too, Holly is really good at that. It's like the front kick. It's when Anderson Silva knocked out Belfort, and everyone was like, oh, the front kick.

Look at this amazing new weapon. It's probably the first kick ever taught in traditional martial arts. It's just he made it so popular. And then all of a sudden you see it as a new trend where everyone started throwing front kicks to the face. It became like a new popular little trend there for a little bit that, hey, look, front kicks work again. It's just they were forgotten about. And that's what I'm hoping with the low kick. They were forgotten about and then they come back.

Yeah. I think there's room for a lot of different kicks in MMA that aren't there yet. And one of them that we're seeing in some organizations is axe kicks. Yeah. And I saw some, well, there was that guy that was fighting in MMA for a while. Did you ever see Adlon Amagov? I don't think so. Who's a wild fighter, man.

He's no longer part of the ufc no he retired he stopped fighting in mma but he was really talented man he knocked out it was tj walberger i believe in the ufc with an axe kick no he i forget what he kicked him with and punched him with too but he he had wicked kicks and incredible flexibility. So he had this ability to utilize techniques that you don't necessarily think of as knockout techniques, but he would smash guys with axe kicks and front kicks and round kicks. For the kickboxing fans listening, Andy Hoog? Oh, yeah. Spinning hook kicks to the leg?

Yes. There's a guy fighting on LA on the show. You're at Guto Innocence. He fought in the UFC twice. He fought in Strikeforce once. He has a kickboxing finish with a spinning heel kick to the leg.

I saw that. Yeah. His wheel kicks are nasty, man. What about that other kid on the last UFC? Yair, is it? Yair Rodriguez, yeah. Wow. Woo! That was hard to watch. Yeah, it was very tough to watch, but the kid's incredible. He 360 roundhouse kicked BJ Penn

in the face. I don't know how BJ didn't go down. BJ's got an iron chin, man. Lorenz Larkin. Pull up Lorenz Larkin versus who did he stop? What is Lorenz Larkin versus, who did he stop? What is Lorenz Larkin's, god damn it, why can't I remember this right now? John Howard?

No. Okay. Lorenz Larkin's recent fights. Okay. Neil Magny, Jesus Christ. Pull up Lorenz Larkin, Neil Magny, because I want to show him that oblique kick to the body. One of my guys out there that's in the green room, Matt Special, he actually sent me the fight. I was too busy with glory notes, but he sent me that exact fight to watch.

Lorenz Larkin's a motherfucker. He's really good. And he does a lot of spinning wheel kicks to the thigh, too. He does a lot of wild shit. Why not? I think any kick should be able to be thrown at different levels sure and that's what makes that kick more effective yeah if you're constantly going at one level it becomes easy to defend so you got to change the levels that's why same thing

as southpaws um guys don't kick enough from a southpaw or if they do it's constantly one it's either the inside leg they're not attacking attacking the back legs, the bodies, the heads. You've got to change levels. Not enough self-pause or changing levels with that left kick. Do you experiment or use any traditional martial arts techniques? Do you ever throw side kicks or spinning kicks? Not anymore. Not anymore.

I've really been taught to keep really tight on a shield. But now, my whole style has actually been trying to add dimensions to it. So I've been boxing a lot more. And even though, yeah, I've had the concussions, it doesn't mean I stopped being a martial artist. This is when my

real martial arts training has evolved. When I was fighting, I couldn't do all this stuff when I was fighting. I didn't have time to sit there. For example, the last three months, I fought southpaw. I've been training southpaw. it's a new dimension uh to my game so now's the time i get to be a full-time martial artist and learn watch how he throws this oblique kick to the body back up a little bit because this is the end of the fight he's setting it up with the low kick well he sets it up with

everything but it's what's interesting is the distance where he throws this oblique kick he throws it like right there. Boom. See how he throws it? It's crazy. It's kind of like heel in, toe out. Yeah, heel in, toe out. And he's so fast with it.

You know why I like that? Because if the elbow's in, it gets the foot probably just outside of the elbow or inside. It kind of follows the inside forearm nicely. Yeah. Lorenz is the best I've ever seen at throwing that kick and throwing it like right in there. He tried. He tried right there and missed, but he throws it from tight quarters,

and guys think he's going to throw low kicks. So he mixes it up with that. He's using the low kick, and then he sets it up with, you know, with either the oblique kick or the low kick, and he constantly varies them. Because that kick traditionally is meant to hit with the heel, right? i mean he's hitting it with the heel but it's um it's so weird to look at because you're like oh yeah you can do that too his setup is unreal with the low kick yes yes his setup is great and this was a a great fight for him because you know i knew lorenz was super talented before this but neil magny was a highly rated guy, and Lorenz just ran through him.

I mean, is the difference in the striking? Magny is a really good all-around fighter. He's really well-rounded. He's got incredible endurance. But what Lorenz was able to do was avoid all this stuff, avoid the ground game, keep the fight in his wheelhouse, which is in the stand-up, and just show how much more technical he is on his feet

and how much quicker he is at closing the gap. And he's staying long too, right? Yeah, and he's fighting a tall guy too. Yeah, if you think about it, if Larkin's got the shorter arms, why is he going to sit there and want to box with a guy with longer arms? You've got to change your distance, and the low kick's perfect. It worked, set up perfectly. Now back to Mu that's it now back

to um muay thai and elbows don't you think that elbows are that well obviously they're really effective you know and elbows and elbows from the clinch and knees from the clinch they're obviously really effective techniques why do you like rules that don't have those in i remember listening to your podcast and someone asked i think you were talking about how you feel Muay Thai is like the purest art of stand-up fighting. I think it's it makes sense. Yeah, I like all fighting I like MMA, you know, obviously love it I think MMA is probably my favorite thing to watch but what I like about Muay Thai is When you're seeing the clinch you're using all the potential weapons from inside that position.

Whereas in kickboxing, they will separate you. It's just, for me personally, why I don't like the clinch, it slows the fight down. I'm not saying it's because you can be a crappy outside fighter, but be so strong and dominant in the clinch and win all your fights in the clinch. Right. So, I mean, I think it's just a rule set. And, I mean, each guy is going to be different from what they're good at or not good at. And it's how you train. But you have to change your style.

You have to change. Like, even if I were to fight, we talked about kickboxing and MMA. You have to change your style. But even if you fight between kickboxing and Muay Thai, you have to change quite a bit. You have to change your style. But even if you fight between kickboxing and Muay Thai, you have to change quite a bit. You have to stay longer. If you're a fighter like myself who doesn't want to get into the clinch, you have to fight differently. You have to use triangle stepping in your footwork.

You've got to use more distance. You've got to stay away. I can maybe only throw a two, three-hit combination before I have to exit and move again because I know he's going to try to grab me and clinch me and slice me up with his elbows. Is there a more difficult transition? Do you think that the transition between kickboxing and Muay Thai is more difficult or the transition between Muay Thai and kickboxing?

Because we're seeing a lot of Muay Thai champions that are now entering into kickboxing with varied results. I'm going to say kickboxing to Muay Thai. More difficult. It's more difficult. Why is that? Because you're adding all these new weapons. So you all of a sudden now have these weapons that you're not used to.

Where with Muay Thai, you kind of take away some, but you still have your other weapons that are effective. And I had this conversation with a lot of the Muay Thai fighters. They were saying how you got to look at the success of Muay Thai fighters in kickboxing. You have Sitichai, Sitsong Pinong, who's a savage. He's the current lightweight champion. Fighters like San Chai, Muay Thai legend, came in and his first kickboxing fight dominated. This young Thai kid that just came in in France, Panamarung Kiatmukau, he came in and just left kicked one weapon, shut down an aggressive punch to low kicker. Just one kick, left kick, left kick, left kick.

And these guys have been fighting for so long, it's fighting to them. Fighting at the end of the day is still fighting. So these Thai guys who are following traditional Muay Thai are still being very successful in kickboxing. One of the biggest, Mukau. That guy dominated. Yeah, Mukau's a great example of the biggest. Bukow. Yeah. That guy dominated. Yeah, Bukow's a great example of it. And still around, too. Sancai is really interesting.

She watches Glory fight? Yes, I did. Yeah, he's fun to watch, man. Oh, yeah. Tricky, slipping. He'll fight big guys, small guys. He put a whole social media campaign to fight Conor McGregor. In MMA?

Yeah, I think so. Does he know how to wrestle? No. I don't think so. Good luck with all that. What's your thoughts on Conor and Floyd? That's a big thing right now. Could that even happen? It could happen, yeah. Floyd is

like, again, the best defensive fighter ever. In a straight boxing match You got to give the advantage to him. I just have to you have that traditional wisdom would say that he's gonna box Connors face off that's you would look at it. You would look at what he's been able to do but Connors a fucking freak man. He's a weird guy He's got his mind is so fucking strong and he eats pressure. He just eats it.

Like when he stepped into that ring with Jose Aldo, he looked like he didn't have a care in the world. It's just that confidence and that belief, man. It's just staggering. And he had talked so much shit for so long. And Aldo was just fuming. He was steaming at the brain when he got in there. Oh, he was so emotionally invested in that fight it was almost like he had never been disrespected like that and to be disrespected for

months i mean they had done this huge world tour where connor stole his belt at a press conference and was yelling at him and i mean it was madness and then to have the fight and then connor starches him with one punch 13 second into the fight like wow yeah that that stirred up a lot of yeah so attention obviously Floyd is not Jose Aldo Floyd is you know it would be a boxing match in an MMA match Connor would fucking kill him for sure he would kill him he'd kick the shit out of him it wouldn't even be close Floyd would never get close to him Connor kicked his fucking legs out from under him every time yeah it would be it would be brutal but in a boxing match one thing that

Connors got going for me he's a way bigger guy he's I mean I know he fought at 145 but Jesus Christ he looked like a dead man when he made 45 oh yeah his shoulders are broad like he's yeah he's walking around a 170 ish somewhere around then and I don't think Floyd is Floyd is a smaller guy than that and again what you were saying about with kickboxing I think the same holds true with boxing that those fighters are they're not cutting the kind of weight that MMA fighters are cutting so I don't know what they would weigh in at I would assume it probably like 155 somewhere around there and then once they got into the octagon or the ring rather it would be a boxing match Floyd would probably have a disadvantage weight-wise of somewhere around 15 pounds.

Yeah, no. I can't see it happening. But if they did, Floyd, look, Canelo had a big weight advantage over him in that fight too, and Floyd shut that shit down. Yeah. He's just so good at boxing, man. He's just so good. He's so skillful.

The more I follow and train and learn boxing, it's something I wish I started a lot earlier on in my career. Man, it's like you only have two weapons, and you all of a sudden have to make this complex strategy through creating openings. With kicks, you have a whole other dimension. Elbows, clinch. But with boxing, man, you got two fists that you have to make land it's tough man and i get why it's called the sweet

science now when you are training are you sparring uh right yeah i do but i make sure i spar with the right guys and that kind of thing but i still do spar and are you worried at all about getting hit when you're doing this yes and no yes and you just love it too much i just love it man i just i'm not stupid and that's the the last thing you could ever call me i do everything very calculated very smart so if i know there's an issue i slow it down or if there's an aggressive guy but i still spar and i still start very controlled and i could pick it up if i want it's just why was the question sometimes like i don't need to get in there and have those sparring matches where I'm trying to take the guy's head off. It just doesn't make any sense.

Well, obviously the consequences for you are so much more obvious and intense, you know, knowing what you've been through. I mean, is that in the back of your head at all while you're doing it? Sometimes. What's your take on these fighters taking a new approach on not sparring anymore? Well, Donald Cerrone is taking that approach, and it seems really effective for him, but I think part of what's doing well for him, I mean, obviously, he has excellent timing. Obviously, he's very experienced as a fighter already, and he likes to stay active, but his take on it was that he was beating himself up too much in the gym, that he was sparring too many hard rounds and he would go into these fights already damaged.

He just couldn't take shots. Well, that's the philosophy in Muay Thai. They don't really spar hard in Thailand. It's because they fight very often too. But if you're not fighting very often, would you need that sparring? It's a good question. I think there's stupid sparring and then there's quality sparring. I think there's so many different ways to spar.

If you're constantly going in there and you're trying to slug it out and getting sloppy, that's not good sparring. Right. It's terrible. But you can get a good guy that kind of really sets his shots up really good, goes hard to the body on low kicks. When I spar my guys, we're trying to take each other out with body shots and low kicks. If I finish my training partner to the body, I feel like the king. You know what I mean? I walk around. I'm just walking like I to the body, I feel like the king. You know what I mean? I walk around.

I'm just walking like I own the place, man. To the body. To the body, low kicks. Those are okay, but you don't need to finish guys to the head in sparring. Right. That's the Dutch way, right? They would go 100% to the legs and to the body. Speaking of some of the Dutch guys, like Jason Wilnes, who's fighting, his coach was telling

me they do somewhere along the lines of 50 rounds of sparring a week. Jesus Christ. Yeah. That's a lot. Like, again, I don't know how intense or the type of shots, but they rely a lot on sparring. Well, Willness's fight with Simon Marcus, what a fight that was. Jesus Christ. That was an amazing fight.

And Simon Marcus looked so fucking good in the beginning of that fight. In the first round. Oh, my God. He was just exploding. But it seemed like he drained his gas tank. Yeah, got too cocky with that head movement. Yeah, what was that about? Like, he, at one point in the fight, like, almost, like, invited him to punch him

and just kind of moved his head a little bit. Then they gave him a count for that, too. Yeah. And then he, I don't, I wouldn't have called that one a count, but the referee did a good stop on that. His wellness was just unloading. Well, definitely on the stoppage. But it seemed like when they gave him a count, maybe the referee was seeing some shit we weren't seeing.

Because it seemed like Simon, from that point on, started to wither. Yeah. That was crazy. Because you look how good he looked in the beginning of that fight. He was blasting those kicks in. It was like, Jesus. And he was fucking going for it, man. Which is, when you look at Simon, he's so shredded.

You know? I mean, he's a specimen. And his style is so predicated on that. He's like reliant on that. He's just, ba-bam, ba-bam. He yells in the ring like, yeah. Yeah. Intense.

But he just couldn't keep it up, man. He couldn't keep that pace up. But this is why I like this fight with Adesanya. Did you ever see his real stuff? They call him the style bender. Style bender, yeah. Guy is all like wicked. He's throwing low line, technical, good distance control,

southpaw, orthodox, spin kick, boxes. He's good. He's amazing. On paper, that is the style to beat that Dutch style straightforward fighting. Right? You want to fight on angles, use distance, use movement. Yeah. Where how do you beat someone like Stylebender?

Right. Constant pressure, you know, head-to-head fighting, low kicks. So you're going to see Willness try to use that head-to-head pressure fighting like we saw with me and Raymond Daniels versus Adesanya trying to use that movement on the outside, pick his shots, fight on angles. So on paper, both of these guys have the style to beat one another. I think that's why that fight's super exciting for me to watch. Well, Stylebender has been toying with the idea of fighting in MMA, too. And I'm really interested to see.

He's 9-0 in MMA. Yeah, but I mean, I'm sorry. Nine knockouts. He's been toying with the idea of fighting in MMA too. And I'm really interested to see. He's 9-0 in MMA. But I mean, I'm sorry. Nine knockouts. Toying with the idea of fighting in the UFC, I should say. Yeah. And I'm really interested to see like how he manages training and competing in both sports because that was a giant issue with Joe Schilling. You know, Joe Schilling was trying to do both things at the same time.

Yeah. When he just decided that, you know, it's just not really smart and wasn't, he wasn't able to fight to his best ability in mma no too many limits yeah and you don't have much time he's in his 30s like how much you know how much time is there in a day how much time is there in your life if you want to be excellent at one thing it's a lot that's why if you're a real perfectionist mma is tough yeah like just you you have to be okay with not being excellent at everything. Yeah.

And that's a hard concept for a martial artist and an athlete to be like, hey, your striking's just going to be okay, but we've got to work on your ground, so don't worry about your striking now. There's only so much time in a day you can do training. That's a really interesting thing that you just said. You have to be really okay at that because like if you do jiu-jitsu you're gonna get strangled by black belts but you go well if we're kickboxing i'd fuck that dude up exactly and you have to have that in your head but then again you know if you're doing kickboxing with a guy like bull cow you know like well you know you're not as good as him a kickball i'll fucking take his ass down then you can't kick me gotta be okay with it well that was one of the

things that george was so amazing at saint pier Pierre was so amazing at being able to do whatever he wanted to, dependent upon what you thought he was going to do. Oh, he was definitely above average in everything. Yes. But you put George St. Pierre in a kickboxing fight. Yeah. He wouldn't be the best. He wouldn't be the best.

Yeah. But, I mean, he's great. He's phenomenal at everything else. Well, I think that's what made him so dominant. He's above average on everything. And also incredibly unpredictable and creative. That was one of the best things about him. And athletic. One of the most athletic guys I've

seen in the sport. Yeah, he's a really interesting case too because George didn't really wrestle competitively in college or in high school. He learned wrestling from a bunch of Russian nationals in Montreal. Which could be good. You lose a lot of those things that aren't needed. George is also, he's

so humble. As confident as he was as a champion and as a dominant champion, he's so humble. You could teach George things and he would just completely absorb it. He would never, he wasn't the type of guy that would have a hard time learning

new things he was very open to stuff because i always follow him on social media and stuff and i hope i'm actually trying to get out to tri-star was talking uh for us a little bit i would love to go out there and train with their team and to see if you know how we can you know connect together i think that'd be an awesome connection it would be awesome i think he's still gonna fight i mean he's still still actually when i heard mean, he's still talking about it. Actually, when I heard that, that's when I hit up Firas. I'm like, hey, man, like, shit, call me in, man. Let me help you guys on in striking, man.

Yeah, tag me in. I got to do some work with GSP when he did that Kickboxer Vengeance movie. And it was cool because he came in. And he's like, never met George in my life at this point. He's like, Voltellini, I'm a fan of yours. I watch you fight Raymond Daniels.

I was like, what? And so for him, because he comes from that karate background, so for him to, you know, say that he liked my style

and he was a fan of mine from my Raymond Daniels fight, I was like, shit, this is awesome. Well, they brought Raymond Daniels in to prepare

Roy McDonald when he fought Steven Wonderboy. Then I think even GSP went to Daniels' fight, Bellator kickboxing fight. Yeah, fought Steven Wonderboy. Yeah. Then I think even GSP went to Daniel's fight, Bellator kickboxing fight. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did.

Yeah, well, that's another good thing, too, that Bellator is holding those really high-level kickboxing bouts, too. You know, Kevin Ross is over there. Yeah, he's been doing well.

Yeah, and Gaston Bolanos is now going to fight, he's going to fight MMA for Bellator. I saw that. I was actually talking to their coach today. I was like,

man, we've got to get Gaston and he'd be good in the ufc but if we get him on glory i think he needs that good platform to really grow and be consistent with i think he'd be a perfect fit for glory i mean as far as like uh coverage and as far yeah he gets that full-time attention and who knows we'll see how good he is in MMA. Is he just a phenomenal striker trying to test himself in MMA? How was his ground skills? I don't know. I know he can wrestle. I know he's a good wrestler.

But like at a professional wrestling level, like ready to go kind of style? It's hard to say because what I'm hearing is from just guys who train with him and guys who have trained MMA with him, they're surprised at how good his wrestling is. He's just a really strong, athletic guy. Learns quick. But his Muay Thai is obviously very, very good. Elbows, I see those spinning elbows. He's killing guys in line fight with it.

Yeah, but he'd be perfect for glory. Yeah, now, do you follow all these other organizations? You follow Bellator Kickboxing? I follow it. I follow all fighting. As much as I can. Now, when you watch, like, say, if you watch Lion Fight or you watch Bellator or any of these other organizations, do you, like, make notes like, oh, I'd like to see this guy over in Glory?

I do. I try to hint it out. I try to hint it out. What is Glory's plans? I mean, I know you said that they have 18 events this year, which is amazing. And they're going to be split between, we got some good investors in Glory from China. So we're going to actually try to get a few shows out in China. We're looking at South America.

And then the rest mixed between the U.S. and Europe. That's awesome. 18 shows. And this is the first time that Glory's coming out and saying, listen, there's 18 shows. In our December Collision show, we got to announce Glory LA. We're going to go to Chicago next. So we're having that time to show everyone that, hey, man, there's two, three shows coming up.

Here's time to prepare and plan because when you don't have that funding all the time, it's kind of hard to have those multiple events and have that time to build up the shows properly. And now that we have it, I think the sports is going to go crazy. I hope so, man. I really do. And I think it's awesome they're going to have more than one a month. I mean, that's incredible.

People need consistency. One a month plus six more. That's amazing. I mean, every other month. Yeah. People need consistency. One a month plus six more. That's, that's amazing. I mean, you know, every other month they're going to have two events then. That's what we want. That's incredible. That's really good. And like, as far as coverage, I know you guys are on UFC Fight Pass. It's also sometimes on ESPN. It's on ESPN3 and sometimes we get ESPN2 live. So it's all depending. But I'm hoping we can get on. That's a huge step because we started off on Spike TV. Which was great.

It was okay. It was going well. It was great for me. I can watch it. Yeah. But then what was happening was when we went to ESPN, it's just a whole different market now. If we want to hit those casual fans, ESPN is going to be the place to do it. Yes.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. ESPN3, though, is weird. We need to hit those casual fans. ESPN is going to be the place to do it. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. ESPN 3, though, is weird. We need to get it. When we're live on 2, it seems to do well. But we just got to keep it going. Now, what are they going to do with Rico and Botter? Because the Rico Verhoeven-Botter Hari fight was probably one of the most hyped up heavyweight fights of all time.

Oh, there's 13,000 people. Nuts. Was it really? Yeah. Wow. Like, when Botter Hari is in the, like people know he's a superstar. Yes. Like he doesn't even have to fight and he's a superstar.

And it was in Uberhausen, Germany, which is where borders Holland. So all the Holland fans, a lot of the Dutch Moroccans came in. When he came out, crazy. People were just going nuts trying to rush and get him. He's a superstar. So it needs fights like that. And it's kind of like that Conor McGregor. He builds that energy around him that people just need to tune into.

And I think that's what Botter does. So that rematch is going to be crazy. So I think Rico is going to go fight. He has some other fights that he has to fight. There's contender tournaments that uh winner he gets to fight like he has a fight with ishmael lott planned i think um if you watch collision there's uh ben jamal sadiq who was that big monster heavyweight he's looking good you have guys like jafar wellness who are doing really well benjamin attic boy so there's so many fights for

rico and i think botter is going to be once heals up, and then maybe they'll do another one next year. But nothing planned right now. There's got to be another fight. Yeah, it has to happen. But, I mean, how long does it take before Botter can be back in action? He had a broken forearm. Is that what happened in the fight? He tore a ligament.

Oh, that's what it was? I think it was a torn ligament. Huh. And I've rewatched it a few times, trying to see where in the fight it happened. And it's very tough to actually see where it happened. But apparently he tore a ligament in his forearm and it just wasn't working right you can tell he looked down like because it didn't look like when trying to find it there was no real time where the damage happened where you seen him do it i don't know it was weird but i think it's somewhere it must have torn and he just couldn't take the pain anymore. God, that was so weird.

But it was interesting because Botter, who's just a notorious psycho, came out in the first round pretty controlled and measured, you know, and approached the fight intelligently too. Said, no, we're going to do three rounds. I haven't been fighting in a long time. I want a five-round fight. I want a three-round fight. Didn't care about the title. Yeah. it wasn't for the world title yeah i think what he wanted to do was

have this three rounder then let them meet again for the five rounds so if it's a torn tendon or ligament rather that is a much more invasive issue right that's a long yeah i haven't really gotten an update i'll try to find out for us usually ligaments take a long time. I haven't really gotten an update. I'll try to find out for us. Usually ligaments take a long time to heal. Maybe even need surgery or something like that and if that's the case you might be out a year unfortunately.

That fight needs to happen. We need to get more people. We need to get more people on and that's what got everyone hyped. Yeah. Got everyone excited about kickboxing again.

Botter's such a personality you know. That's the kindest use of that word, personality, ever. Just going to keep him out of jail between now and the next fight. Even in the post-fight interview, he goes to Rico and he looked at him and he said, you know what, you did good. You did good. But next time, I'm going to knock you the fuck out.

And everyone was like, holy shit. Like already the next fight's already hyped up. Even after the loss, we're like, yeah, this is what the sport needs. Let's get attention. And I keep trying to say, and I came out publicly a little while ago, fighters need to, in the kickboxing realm, need to do more to promote themselves. They can't constantly rely on glory or other people to kind of promote them. They got to go out there and really try to build themselves.

And the more they build themselves, the more the sport's going to build. Yeah, I completely agree. It's just so hard for fighters to figure out how to promote themselves. It's hard enough to be a great fighter. It's hard enough to train hard and get in shape and fight smart and to, you know, concentrate on social media too. And you see a lot of fails and a lot of, a lot of fake, of fake trash talking that just comes out clunky. Terrible. But then there's always these guys like Conor that do it, and you just go, Jesus, he's so effortless with it. Chill son in. Yes.

But that's their personality, you know? It just happens naturally. Yeah. Sure, everyone would love to be Conor, right? Fuck yeah. Not many people can. Yeah. I mean, look, he's got Floyd Mayweather

saying that that's the only fight that he's interested in. Yeah. Hey, Jamie, what the hell's going on with that thing up there? I don't know. It started doing that thing.

It's just resetting itself. I can't change it. Is it YouTube? I'm not controlling it right now. I don't know. What is it? It's the TV. Oh, the TV's whacking it?

I don't know. Oh, wow. I'll turn it off and reset it. Oh, okay. Because I wanted to see that other fight that you were telling me about, the highlight reel. Oh, with MediBagdad? Yes.

Yeah, that's a wicked one. Yeah. Just, yeah, okay. And it's a little clip of just me throwing different combinations, and then you see the big elbow. It's on YouTube. Valtellini versus MediBagdad. We'll put that up, and we'll talk about that, too.

So, right now, you are 100% commentating on Glory. You're taking some time off of your high school teaching. So what do your days look like? Right now it's just me training again. And I feel I want to get back into the first time. I want to try doing different things. Like my body needs to be stretched out a little bit. The years of damage on my joints, I want to start doing more yoga.

I'm going to try some yoga out. I want to create a kickboxing, a professional kickboxing program for other pros to come in and have daytime training and stuff like that. Oh, that's beautiful. So there's lots of things. So this whole fight was all about different.

And he's good. He's doing pretty well in the ufc i think isn't he's yeah no he's a tough guy that's such a gorgeous combination man that left hook to the body and the low kick you know that ernesto who's combination he's another one of my all-time favorites he's my he is my favorite god he's so good there was one highlight that he has on that I literally watched probably a million times. Why is he cheering? Because he couldn't take the low kicks anymore, so it was his way of hyping it up. Yeah, you'll see the elbows soon.

This one right here. See that elbow? Yeah. Watch what happens. Wow. Gash right away, huh? It's those slicing elbows, right? So that's it.

That's all he really threw was a down downward elbow wow that is a fucking gash man he basically only hit me with that shot and that was in like the the fourth round wow and were you worried about the fight getting stopped here i don't they probably should have stopped it really probably but i mean i was okay and as a fighter you're never gonna say stop the fight right but probably looking back and then right away I just come back and say, you know what, let me give you that leg. Was the blood going into your eyes at this point? A little bit.

I remember, and this was in 3D apparently that they filmed it. Oh, really? Literally. Yeah, I don't know. So I would have loved to have seen it. Man, that is a gash. That's not even the big one. The big one's in my head that you can't even see.

On top? Yeah, it's just right through that hairline That is such a nasty combination man Yeah, but he basically hit me with two elbows the whole fight that's crazy two gashes every time he did well You can't even see a scar man. You got a good plastic surgeon. How was that the back stage doctor? That's His face when he started cutting my uh starting to stitch me was like i was making all these faces like oh man i don't want to know that a doctor was making a face like that what kind of fucking doctor is he i don't know that's ridiculous yeah that's crazy man so

do you have any desire to compete again are you sure do you have you like figured your path out from here on out glory's been too good. I've been loving this commentary gig. It's a new challenge. It's new. So for me, this is the first time, even when I won my world title, I'd work during the day as a teacher, eat my lunch as I drove to the gym, and then I would train at night. I won a world title working a full-time job.

Wow. Because it's just at that point there wasn't enough. I'm used to a certain type of living and I don't want to have to fight to survive. And my whole thing was I'm going to use fighting to build it as a platform. So now, because I have a university education, I'm able to have a commentary job. I'm able to run my own gym. I'm able to have other things going on. So I was very lucky to build a good platform that I didn't have to rely on fighting for my income. So right now things are too good. There's more money on the sitting in a suit and, you know, trying to be Joe Rogan.

So, I mean, it's more money. It's better on my health. And you're happy and enjoying it. I'm loving it. That's awesome. I'm genuinely loving it what was your education in uh health and physical education that's interesting so when you look at uh training methods like uh some of the methods that are being employed today some of the various strength and

conditioning methods what do you uh is there anything that you think that really stands out well the main thing for me is guys in combat sports who are using CrossFit as a form of weight training for fighting. I don't necessarily agree with that based on many things because you're doing an unsafe exercise like a deadlift or a clean, and you're doing it over time where those movements are made to develop power, hip strength. They're not meant for endurance.

So a lot of guys are hurting themselves. Like I'm seeing, I saw some CrossFit guys and they're doing these terrible rounded back deadlifts. And they're just trying to get the bar up and weight and they're hurting themselves. And they're doing too much. But a sports specific properly tailored strength program is very important. But crossfitting is just killing guys, their body, the damage on the joints. It wasn't made to help you enhance. There's different ways to do it in a safer way that helps protect your body. Too many people are canceling fights with injuries. I think they over-trained. They're doing things that, you know, things like CrossFit,

where they're constantly killing their bodies. That's interesting because some people think that, you know, fighters are over-training and some people think, no, the problem is they just haven't built themselves up to the point where they can do this the way they need to. Over-training, man. You think it's over-training? They're over-training. Now, when you were fighting, what, did you do any kind of strength and conditioning? I was huge on it. I was very big on it. I was very, it's very, it's, it's very complex. It's very difficult to explain, but in, in, in a, in a short term, it's like you have to, it's a periodization. So right after my fight, I would go into a hypertrophy phase where I tried to build

myself because during your camp, you're losing weight. You're trying to break down muscle because you're constantly training. You're not eating as much. So I would go through a hypertrophy phase, which is build and get big as strong as I possibly can. Closer to fight time, I build that muscle into more explosive power. So that's when I start doing, instead of high volume reps, I'm starting to kind of lower my rep count. I'll do five sets of five on squat. I'll do deadlifts to five. And it's now translating that muscle and that size into power. From there, you got to get the power phase turns into more of an explosive phase. So I start turning that power into that explosive. So I'll start doing like med ball throws, explosive jumping.

I'll box squat instead of a regular squat. And even when you're in that hypertrophy phase and when you're building muscle, the whole point is to break your body down. So you're sore. Everyone knows how sore and how shitty they feel 24 to 48 hours after a workout. And that's good because your body's breaking down and has to get stronger. But when your goal is to fight and be good at your sport, you can't have that soreness because it's going to take away from your training. So that's why we really have to periodize our training to make sure we can peak on fight night. There's a lot of talk in MMA circles that strength and conditioning is the most important thing that once you're in camp That's what you should concentrate on is your cardio your endurance and that your fight skills actually come in Secondary because you already know how to fight there's some people that believe that what you need to do is

Work on your fight skills All the other time not that you abandon them But that they take second place and that the most important thing is having a phenomenal gas tank Yeah, I don't know about that. I think fighting you have to constant you're fighting so you have right you have to practice What you're doing do you think they'll I think the most important is your mind the mind the mind is number one Did you and did you involve yourself in any sort of mental training? Do you I just I was naturally gifted with it I was naturally gifted with it. I naturally had the ability to be able to block things.

It could have been my years of sports background, but man, come fight time, I barely even thought of the fight. People are like, oh, you're going to Japan next week to fight. Two fights in one night. I was like, yeah, okay. I'll deal with it when I have to get there kind of thing. I put my work in. The more you stress about it, the more you release the cortisone, more that your body breaks itself down, the more stressed you get, the less sleep you're going to

have. All terrible shit when you're fighting in a few days, right? So my whole strategy was just to say, I do my work. And the problem with you said about overtraining and guys fight, then they party, they eat like shit. They constantly don't focus on fighting the okay you're fighting in eight weeks then they go oh shit i gotta do a crash course and get up to shape and then they over train a true martial artist isn't doesn't look at the fight um on a fight basis it looks at a longevity i'm looking at okay for this fight yeah my boxing might improve a little bit, but I have to improve something else. And there's constantly improvements in all areas. So you

constantly, as soon as you're done your fight, yeah, it's healthy to take a week or two off. Some guys three weeks, depending on the damage you had, but you got to get working again. You got to get back to sharpening your tools, your weapons, your mind. You got to get back into it and constantly training. You got to learn 24-7. I don't agree with guys who think they can just train for camps. Eight-week camps. A real fighter, a real athlete, a real martial artist is going to train all year round. Yeah, you have to look at it also in terms of you're involved in one of the most dangerous pursuits athletically than someone can engage in.

And any time that you're getting better is going to take away some damage that you could possibly sustain. It's going to make you better at administering damage. It's going to make you better. It's just a matter of staying the course and being disciplined. You have to work it. Yeah. And, I mean, intensity changes. You're not going to be right after your fight.

You're not going to be training at that hard intensity that you are, that you were before the fight, but it's still important to constantly train and constantly improve. Now, when you say that you were kind of naturally good at it mentally, no one coached you into how to relax about it? You just kind of instinctively knew that's the way to do it? It just worked. I knew I had to do it.

I knew I had to do it. Like, for me especially, I wasn't fighting guys with my level of experience. Like, you're like, hey, my first fight with Glory, I fought a legend in the sport, Murat Durechi. And when Glory signed me, right after that fight we watched with Mehdi Begdad, I got an email from a random guy at this point. I'm now friends with him. But it's like, hey, I can get you fights. I'm like, yeah, bullshit. Everybody can get me fights. And then fights and then i sent him like yeah here's my manager go off and then they're like hey uh yeah we want to sign you to glory just like a few hours before that medibag that fight so i was like ah wicked because this is what i wanted right

my dreams here so like oh your first fight is against murat direcci in turkey i was like okay i never really the same murat direcci that i think it is like, okay. I never really had the same Murat Direci that I think it is. So I looked it up. I was like, yeah, it's the same guy. He had like 90 fights. It was my seventh. In his hometown, I'm going to press conferences with Gokhan Saki, Daniel Gita, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, I have six professional fights and all the Turkish cameras are all around us. And I didn't know what was going on But I was confident in myself. I believed in myself. I knew I had the skill to do it I looked at my coach and we can I beat this guy and he's like, yeah, you'll kill him

I'm like, all right, cool. Let's do it And then at that point I just had that much confidence and belief in myself that nothing mattered now when you When you go into a fight like that and you approach a fight like that, and you're saying that these guys had so much more experience than you, so you had to almost approach the fight as a more experienced fighter. Yeah. And I did you, my whole thing was I knew what I was really good at. And I couldn't with someone with a hundred fights, you're so comfortable in there. And if I play that relaxed fighting game with them it's not a good look they're better at picking their shots probably i'd still probably beat them i'm not going to say that but looking before the fight i'm going i'm going to make them fight my

fight if i fight their fight there's a good chance they're going to beat me so i went in and basically you have to fight this fight in order to beat me and this was my strength that was stronger than most of the guys i fought because i had a good strength and conditioning program my uh actually who's outside costa clarionos he was a strength and conditioning coach for the toronto maple leafs in canada so he knew a lot he was amazing so i was the strongest guy um that i've ever i haven't seen anyone who's really stronger than me in the ring so i went in there and i fought my fight good coaching paul min has good coaching so everything was just on point for me now do you do any visualization did you do any any sort of meditation naturally nothing i would just be driving my car and i'm thinking about how it feels to win and how i'm gonna win and it just

happened naturally and then i kind of blocked it off where i didn't even think about it the last thing you want to do is go to your bed at night and think about a fight. It's terrible. Then you're like, oh, shit, what if I get knocked out? Oh, man, everyone's watching me. Who's watching this? It gets scary. So you've got to learn to be able to block it off.

And I think that's where my teaching job helped a little bit. Because when I was in my teaching job, I really didn't think of the fight. I was like, oh, I'll deal with it after lot. Fighting is a lot of stress. A lot of guys can't handle it. And there's a lot of guys you see on pads that are incredible. These guys could whip pads, kicks, punches. One of the most beautiful display of technique on pads. You put them in the ring. They just don't have it mentally. Too much anxiety, too much stress. They just can't handle that pressure. So that's one of the biggest parts is having that confidence in yourself and that mindset.

I wanted to go back to what we were talking about with strength and conditioning. Like I said, there's a philosophy that many are taking in MMA that the strength and conditioning is more important during fight camp than actual fight training itself. This is about MMA, though. in fight camp than actual fight training itself. This is about MMA, though. Do you think that maybe the physical requirements of fighting five-minute rounds and a lot of the grappling and clinching, which is just unbelievably grueling on your body, do you think that there's different physical requirements in that sport maybe than kickboxing? I think it's just different. It's just different.

You need that different. If I were to roll one minute in jiu-jitsu, I'd probably be gassed out. I wrestle around sometimes just as a joke. Actually, the father of my niece and nephew is one of the pioneers in Canada of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I don't know, Richard Monkey Nanku. He's just been around in my whole life. If I roll for one minute, I'm gassed. I can't do it.

But if they kickbox with me for one minute they can't handle it either right so it's just what you prepare for if you're that marathon runner and you try to swim five lanes in the pool you're done totally different energy systems but i have to say mma is different demands on the body it's a totally different demand on the body you need to be able to wrestle and then stand up and be explosive, which is really difficult to do. Do you foresee yourself getting involved any more deeply in MMA? I would love to. I would love to. I'm just waiting for a guy. I'm not that guy that's going to really go out there. And this is George St. Pierre, obviously, but I'm hoping to one day obviously

have a build, a good group of guys who are fighting in the UFC. I would love to have that. That's the ultimate goal is to be able to impart your knowledge on some of the guys that are coming up. For sure. And especially at the gym now, I've been loving it. Been loving it. And I've seen a lot of those UFC guys now are hopefully seeing all these videos and these drills that I'm posting and what I can have to offer. And it'd be good.

There's so many times I watched the UFC. I'm like, if this guy had a little bit of, you know, me coaching him. And I'm sure they have great coaches. But, you know, they just need that little extra. I know what you're saying. And I think this is also such a cool time for fighters to be able to hear these words from guys like you. And to be able to easily access those videos that you're putting up and all these striking breakdowns that guys like Lawrence Kenshin are putting up and

all these other people. I mean, it's an amazing time as far as like the amount of information that you can get for fighters. And people have to use it. Yeah. And it's a lot of pride too, right? It's tough sometimes. Like even with a lot of the fighters that I approach and I i give tips to when you're at a higher level you think you know everything and that's kind of like you said george was very humble that way where he can kind of like allow and accept knowledge i think that's important a lot of guys can't they think they're just they know and everything and that's terrible mindset i think you're totally right and i think that there's no way like what you were saying about if you want to be a very good MMA fighter, there's no way you're going to be the best at everything. It's impossible. So when you got a guy like George, you know, one of the beautiful things about him was that he was aware of where his limitations lie. He was aware of where his strengths were and he knew how to put it all together. He was aware of where his strengths were, and he knew how to put it all together.

I always talk about fighting as if, like, it's a language. Because I think that, you know, a lot of people know how to use words. A lot of people know what the words are. But can you string them together eloquently? And that's one of the things that I see, like, when I'm watching that fight with Mehdi Baghdad, when you're throwing that combination, left hook to the body, low kick. It's like it's a beautiful flowing sentence in a lot of ways. You're expressing yourself in that, you know. That's a good way of putting it. Cause I was talking to someone, I think it was Matt Embry today. I did fighter interviews before I came.

So a lot of their things they were saying are fresh in my mind, but he was saying, it's like, it's human nature. Everyone knows what fighting is. You can really watch two guys and now you can say who's winning who did more damage you can see it so it's like looking at the words on the page but once you know how to read it becomes a totally different game it's not just words on a page anymore yeah that's a good way of putting it yeah it's um it's a beautiful thing man it really is fighting is like nothing else i mean it's so heartbreaking when you see someone get devastated and smashed like BJ Penn did against Yair Rodriguez.

But on the other hand, so beautiful when you see what Yair was able to do to a legend like BJ Penn. I mean, it's such a fighting in all forms, whether it's boxing, Muay Thai, kickboxing, MMA. It's, to me me one of the most Engaging things for someone to watch would you want to fight in the UFC if you could no no no first of all I'm old as fuck, but in your prime if I was competing Still when the UFC was around I probably would have done something But also when the UFC first came around it was like one weight class have done something but also when the UFC first came around it was like one weight class you know when I stopped fighting was in 1989 that was the last kickboxing fight that I had and that was um

there was nothing and there was no money in it and I was getting headaches too just from sparring and I did not spar smart I sparred meathead style yeah and you know I just I know a lot more today than I ever did then as far as like consequences and what's important and how to learn better. You know, which I think is how, knowing how to be, I was good at being obsessed with things and really like just, just focusing on them constantly all the time. But it was more frantic and frenetic. It wasn't like calculated and intelligent. It's like crashing in and learning. Just, just being obsessed.

Just constantly training all the day. But I think that one of the things that we're learning now is the right way to learn. Like you were saying, so many fighters are over-trained. And that so many fighters spar too hard.

Like you were saying, people think that hitting the pads and getting tired is good work it's tough though because when you have a fighter's mentality you got to think it's easy to be outside and i could say it because i've been in it but when someone on the outside says oh these guys you know they need to train harder they need to keep doing more and more and more and when you're fighting you're like shit i gotta fight in three weeks you never think your conditioning is good enough. You could train every day, all day, put your best effort, and you never going to think your conditioning is good enough. You're going to be like the day before the fight, you've done everything possible in your training. You're going to go on and you're

going to second guess your conditioning. You're going to wonder if you did enough. You're going to wonder, shit, I should have trained now. Why didn't I, my Sunday rest day, I should have been training. I should have been getting better. But really, you have to get in that mindset that, you know, you don't need more all the time. And that's why guys are getting injured. They're putting their bodies, they're not letting themselves rest, and they're getting sick. I bet you if you go on one of your UFC shows and you ask every fighter on that

card who's sick, I bet you 50% would be sick with some sort of cold or infection or sinus infection. Most of those guys are probably sick because their immune system is crashed from not eating, constantly training, stress, not sleeping. I bet you more than half are sick with something. Absolutely. I'm sure. I was always sick before Taekwondo tournaments. Sinuses for me. Every fight I had a sinus infection. And I was even smart about my training. I still got sinus infections. Did you monitor your heart rate?

Did you wake up in the morning and check it? No, I never really did that. It's one of the things Steve Maxwell told me. He said it was very important to find out where you're at. He goes, when you're in shape, find out what your resting heart rate is. Measure it in the morning. And if you wake up in the morning and it's 5 to 10 beats over what it normally is, take the day off. It's like your body's fighting something off.

And you probably won't even think that. You just got to push through. But when you push through in those, that's when you break yourself down. It's that balance between being intelligent and being tough. Being disciplined, but also being calculated. That's where I think your team is very important. You have to have someone like, I had it in my camp, but if you look at Firas and TriStar, we'll use that as an example,

he monitors everything. So he probably looks at George and says, you know, George, you're a little off today. From the way George comes in, he probably knows already. How's his mood? Is he angry right now? Is he cranky? Is he snappy with his already. How's his mood? Is he angry right now? Is he cranky? Is he snappy with his words? Like, what's he doing?

You know, because you've been around the fighter so long that it's, they're like, my coach would say, it's okay, it's time. Take the day off. I was like, no, no, no, I'm going to train now. He's like, take the day off. And then I'll take a day off. I come back and I'm beasting it in the gym the next day where I would have just continually beat down my body and never really recovered and got better.

Right. So like you would come in and you'd feel kind of flat. You'd be like, fuck this. I got to push through this. Yeah. Well, sometimes it's important to push through it. But other times when you know you're at that level, it's like, hey, you got to pull yourself back.

See, that's the crazy thing about fighting and training and learning. But it fucks with your mind. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's such a, I mean, you might be able to do it and pull it off, and it might not be the right way, but it might be successful. And so you do it that way every time. Yeah. I mean, I've had fighters tell me there's no such thing as overtraining.

You know, I'm like, well, that's crazy, because it's definitely- Then you're not training hard enough. Well, there's definitely such a thing as overtraining. You know, it's like- There is, but- A lot of guys have done it. If you're constantly steady with your training, you're not training right. Right.

You better be getting yourself to the point in your training. Everyone was asking me, I trained once a day. That's it? Once a day. And Saturdays I would train twice, but the morning was a strength training, and then the night was kickboxing. Now, when you say strength training, what did that involve? Well, I would do my, depending on the day, I would do a push day, a pull day, and a lower body day.

So lifting weights. Lifting weights, yeah. Strength day was always lifting weights. And I used weight training. So, for example, I would kickbox Monday and Tuesday just once a day. But that hour and a half session, I left everything. When I hit the bag, I couldn't hit 10 rounds of bag. Because after round three, I'm gassed.

I'm putting all my force, all my energy. I'm training for a nine-minute fight. I'm not training for a marathon. So you need to train the proper energy system in order to be the most successful. And that's kind of that anaerobic system of constantly pushing yourself, letting yourself recover, pushing yourself, letting yourself recover. If I'm constantly, that's why I never ran a day in my career. You never ran?

Never ran a day in my career. Wow. I did not hit the road a day in my career. Wow. That's shocking to a lot of people, me included. Everyone who hears it's like, you're nuts, you're crazy. I said, why? Give me one good reason why.

I can give you one, is if you need that time to reflect, if you need that time to mentally prepare yourself, but what does it do for you in the fight? Are you ever going to run 10K in a fight? No, it's a sprint. Do you see sprinters like, you know, Usain Bolt, you know, doing take 10K runs every morning. He might do it to loosen up and stay relaxed, but there's other ways of doing it. You've mentioned it on your podcast, shadowboxing. Instead of going for a 10K run, shadowbox for 20 minutes. Go into the ring and shadowbox.

Envision your opponent. I'm fighting Raymond Daniels. I'm going to pressure fight Raymond Daniels. So I'm going to shadowbox for 20 minutes in the ring like I'm pressure fighting Raymond Daniels. I'm mentally focusing myself. I am using the right energy system because I can pick up my intensity as much as I want. If I'm, if I just want to stay loose, I just won't punch. I might not even punch. I might just use my footwork within the ring to kind of just set my mind, set my feet. But there's so many different ways you can skip.

You can, you know, um, sometimes I do light training on the bag. I'll do some light rounds on different bags just to warm up my hands and my body and that kind of thing, but I never ran. Too much damage. You're running, shin splints, the damage on your joints, and it didn't hit the energy system you hit in fighting, so why do it? That's really interesting because you always had a very high output at work output in your fights and you had very good endurance in your

fights. Everyone thought there was a secret. I said, I trained hard in an hour and a half. I trained hard when I hit the bag, I hit the bag. I wasn't looking around at the time, looking at how much time's left on the clock, I hit the bag. If I knew I was doing, if I was working something technical or drilling, it's different. Right. But when it's time to work, you got to put the work in. You got to be able to cut out all those distractions that you have. And it doesn't matter what you have to do after. It doesn't matter what's going on in your day.

If your girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with you or whatever the frick it is, you got to be focused and you have an hour and a half to do it. Now, when you see MMA fighters that are putting in two a days on a regular, sometimes three, what do you think of that? I think it's okay if you're doing it right. I mean, MMA, there's more things happening, right? So if you're doing a roll in the morning, you know, it's okay, but you're not going to go the hardest rolling you have and then hit the hardest strength and conditioning you have. And then at night do your hardest kickboxing session. There's no way the next day you're actually putting a hundred percent of your energy in those sessions.

So maybe sometimes if they're doing three sessions, they might put 60% in each session. if they're doing three sessions, they might put 60% in each session. You're never really hitting that last 40%, which is probably the place you want to be. You want to be in that place where you're not comfortable. You want to be in that place where you're tired because that's what fighting is, getting yourselves to that point. You want to throw up if you have to. They say it's your mind gives up before the body does. So when you're tired and you're starting to feel all that lactic acid and you shut down, they say it's your brain shutting down first and you have some time to keep going. So you've got to prepare your mind to be able to withstand that.

If you're hitting bag for 10 rounds and you're looking around and you're fucking around, what are you accomplishing that accomplishing that unless you're working on technique or warm up but you have everything has to have a purpose i don't believe in doing something that doesn't have a purpose well that's one of the things that i really like about the way you drill and one of the things i like about the way you shadow box is that you do everything like you're in a fight. Yeah. Everything, guard is high, stance is perfect, footwork is perfect. When you say that you lift weights, like what kind of weight lifting were you doing once a week? It's the basics, but the most effective.

So I would do, I always squatted. Squatting is very important. Why do you think squatting is so important? Lower body. When everything in athletic movements comes from the lower body, you have to have strong hips. You know, your glutes got to be firing at a level. And, you know, when you punch, when you kick, everything comes from your lower body. And that's what people don't understand.

So, were you squatting heavy? Were you squatting lightweights, high reps? Depends what phase I'm in. If I was in hypertrophy phase, I was probably doing 10 sets of 10 on a lower weight. As I was in power strength phase, I was doing doing 10 sets of 10 on a lower weight. As I was in power strength phase, I was doing five sets of five. As I was more of the explosive phase, I would do more of like five sets of three. And then I'd maybe superset it with an explosive jump or a standing long jump or, you know, a skater style movement, but I'd always use it. I'd add sprints. There's one times where I would do five heavy explosive squats, and then I would line up on the track right after my set,

and I would do 10-yard sprints just to work that explosiveness. So that whole point of getting strength into explosiveness. So that kind of running you believed in? Well, just that little bit. Right. But not too much. That would be like once or twice in a camp. Otherwise, I know my central nervous system was going to shut down. No shit. Once or twice in a camp, huh? I wouldn't do it very often. Even that sled running.

You know how all the guys are doing the prowler pulls and sleds? If I did that, I'd be out of commission for a week because my body would just take a beating and then I wouldn't be able to function and do what I really had to do, which was kickbox the next day. Right, right. Right? So it had to have a purpose. I would do it as a mental test for myself. I would do it as, you know, my weight's not coming off right now.

I'm holding a lot of water. Let's run the sleds. I used it as that more than just constantly. If you're running the prowler every day, your nervous system is taking a freaking beating. Right. Now, what about nutrition? Like what did you eat? How did you monitor your diet?

Nutrition, I was a little bit – I wasn't super calculated as people are today with counting their macros and micros. And I was – that's too complicated. And I don't believe in overcomplicating things. I love the basics. I believe in the basics. So I never overcomplicated things. I knew what good carbs and bad carbs were. I knew good timing when to eat.

I knew what things I should be eating when. But I never really counted how many calories I was eating in my day. I just knew through experience. Wow. Yeah, it just came through experience and practicing and playing around with my body. There's no cookie cutter approach you know, approach to it. So like what would a typical meal be like for dinner? It would always be a balanced meal.

Have a little bit of protein, a little bit of carbs and some vegetable. There's always has the three. At first what I was doing when I first started finding, I was like, ah, carbs make you fat. Carbs make you fat. And like everyone thinks, everyone wants to diet. The first thing they think they have to do is cut their carbs out. But now there's all this new research about fats and how important is intermittent fasting and how important it is to keep high fats in your diet.

So a lot of guys are doing the avocados and coconut oils to kind of get that fat. But I just like the balanced meal. I'd rather lower my protein and have a good carbohydrate, which is my first line of energy. So I would eat a lot of sweet potatoes, quinoas, baked potatoes sometimes. Did you supplement with vitamins? Not much. Omega-3s, usually. That's about it.

I take an electrolyte after training. That's about it. Nothing crazy. Now, what about, did you do anything for, go ahead. I take an electrolyte after training. That's about it. Nothing crazy. Now, what about, did you do anything for, go ahead. I was going to say, but I wasn't the guy that, if I knew how to fight, I cut weight from eight weeks out. It wasn't like, hey, I'm going to just eat like shit and then I'll deal with it. No, eight weeks out, my diet started with my camp.

Right, so you try to lower your body fat first. I only want to lose two pounds a week. Anything more than two pounds a week becomes unhealthy. Right. So you try to lower your body fat first. I only want to lose two pounds a week. Anything more than two pounds a week becomes unhealthy. Right. So I'd get to about 10 to 12 pounds the week before my fight

and that was it. Once I was there that last week was all water. And did you do any like deep tissue massage or any ice baths or anything like that

for recovery? I did a little bit of that. Yeah? Yeah, I did a little bit but it wasn't a big focus. I did a lot of rolling out, stretching, that kind of thing but I liked Epsom salt baths. Yeah, that, but not it wasn't a big focus. I did a lot of rolling out stretching that kind of thing, but I

Like Epson salt baths. That's great. I love that some people are obsessed with deep tissue though I know guys like get deep tissue massage every day after training and you've done that was it the Cairo? How do you say it cryotherapy? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's intense. I get love it. You've never done it No, I haven't done it. You want to do it? I'll do it. Let's do it today. I'll take you. Done. All right. I've never done it. Oh, you'll love it.

Yeah. Yeah, it'll freak you out. It's cold as fuck. Yeah. It's just you can't believe how cold it is. You're like, how the fuck is this? I was like, I got to try it. I got to try it.

But yeah, never really. 250 degrees below zero. Yeah. And how long are you in there for? Like 10, 30 minutes? Three minutes. Yeah. Well, you'll do a minute and a half.

They won't let you go more than a minute and a half for the first time. Trying to say I'm soft? No, no, for anyone. It's just the rule. The second time you'll do it, they'll let you do three minutes. How long are you going for? Three minutes. I've done 340. That's the longest I've ever done. Those last 40 minutes. Is it three minutes of hell or is it three minutes of? It's not fun.

Jamie's done it. You've done it? What's it like, Jamie? Describe it. Not really claustrophobic in the word because there's kinds you can've done it? what's it like Jamie? describe it not really claustrophobic isn't the word because there's kinds you can get in that your head's above you can still breathe and you can still talk to people

but this kind is not like that the kind that we go to yeah you're in a you're in a meat locker essentially where the liquid nitrogen cools the oxygen

it's not you know that woman that died in Vegas do you know that story? no well she she said it herself and apparently she was kind of short, and her mouth was below the outer lip,

and so she was breathing in the liquid nitrogen. And you can't, it's like getting choked out. You have no oxygen. So she just fell asleep, and she froze to death. Oh, man. And they found her the next day frozen solid. See, this is the kind that they have. I always see the heads out.

Yeah, that's the kind that most people do, where your head is out and your body's freezing. Look how much fun she's having there. She's having a great time. She's having a blast in there. She's doing an ad. The kind I do, if you go to Cryo Healthcare, Jamie, the kind we do, you have to wear a mask.

You wear like a surgeon's mask over your face. You wear earmuffs. You wear gloves a surgeon's mask over your face. You wear earmuffs. You wear gloves. And you wear. Like slippers. Yeah. You wear socks. And then you wear like rubber Crocs.

And you step in there. And you're inside a chamber. Let's see if they have some images. So you can see what it looks like. Have you done that sensory deprivation stuff? I have one in my basement. Yeah? Yeah. I love it. I have one in my basement. Yeah? Yeah, I love it.

I do that all the time. That's giant. Now, if you're claustrophobic, good or bad? Someone says you don't even think about it. It's not the best thing for people who are claustrophobic, but claustrophobia is psychological. See, that's where it is. See how these guys are?

That's how they're dressed and the earmuffs and the face masks. And so you go in that one chamber that's on the right. That's where you take off the robe. And then you step into the one on the left. And that one is the one where you freeze your dick off. So you'll do, in a little bit, we're going to take you over there. You do about a minute and a half in there. It's awesome.

I'd love to, man. I just want to know about it because people keep asking me. It's great. Well, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who's actually on tomorrow, who's a huge proponent of both sauna and cold shock therapy. And she believes that heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins that you get from sauna and you get from cryotherapy, they provide your body with some incredible anti-inflammatory responses. And your body, essentially, when you go to a sauna, your body's freaking out. Your body's like, what in the fuck? It's so hot.

But if you do it in a controlled environment for a certain amount of time, your body produces these heat shock proteins that are really beneficial for you. So she believes in the sauna. There was a study that she was talking about where the sauna showed a 50% drop in mortality across the board from all things, whether it's from cancer, disease, all these different things. Like the people who regularly did sauna had such a healthy response to that sauna and having those inflammatory markers reduced in the blood. There it is. Using the sauna four to seven times per week associated the blood. There it is. Using the sauna four to seven times per week associated with, oh, it's 40%. 40% lower all cause mortality. That's crazy.

Yeah. I was reading something, Tim Ferriss, he has a book now called Tools of the Titans. And he, someone, he, I guess he has his own podcast or someone just- Very good podcast. And he basically talks to all the top people in their field. And so he wrote a list of all the tips that these people suggested. And a lot of them was on sauna and baths. And he never really got into too much of the science behind it.

But these people in this field are saying sauna three times a week is probably one of the best things you can do for yourself. Yeah, what she was writing there, HSP, that's what she's talking about, heat shock proteins. And I bet you could probably reproduce that with a hot bath. That's what HSP. Cytokines, too, that's also what you're getting from cryotherapy. You're getting these anti-inflammatory responses. And I think you probably could get it from

hot yoga too. Because hot yoga, you get so fucking hot. Do you do hot yoga? I love it. I did it and I took a little break, but I'm starting again. It's amazing. It's amazing for flexibility. The class I was in was an hour and a half. That shit was long. It's long. It sucks.

The last 15 minutes are bullshit. The last one, you literally sit up, lay down or something. I sit up and I'm like, oh, shit, I'm dying, man. Yeah, it's brutal. You definitely get used to it, though. But, you know, I see, like, girls that go to my place. It'll take two classes in a row, so I feel like such a pussy. Yeah, seriously.

They're in there for three hours. I'm sitting there struggling, following this old lady besides me, killing it. I have to use the little foam block to even sit down and everyone's just laughing you can see all the mirrors too and the mirrors make it worse man everyone's feel the whole place is staring at me especially they're looking at you this fucking muscular yeah oh yeah and next to a 60 year old lady who's got her foot above her head that's funny i went with uh when i was going i was with my ex-girlfriend so a lot of the uh a lot of the old ladies would go, is that your boyfriend there?

He's so cute for trying. Because I was trying my ass off. Because I'm an athlete, man. I'm like, I'm not letting this old lady be able to do this shit, and I'm standing here struggling. Are you crazy? But it's like what you were talking about before. If you took a marathon runner and then put him in a pool, they would be dying. But still, you're an athlete, man.

You're going to try, man. Of course. You're going to try. Competitive guy like you. I'm sweating extra from trying so hard. It was tough, but I love athlete, man. You're going to try, man. Of course. You're going to try. Competitive guy like you. I'm sweating extra from trying so hard. Yeah, it was tough, but I love it, man. You know what I feel from yoga, especially from the last year when I've been really consistent with it, is that I feel like all the, like there's a lot of things that are really good

for your body. I think lifting weights is good for your body if you do it correctly. For sure. Martial arts, all sorts of training is good for your body. But I feel like what yoga does for your balance and for all the things that connect, like for your joints and your spine, I've never done anything where I can feel my back pop loose, like pop, pop. Like there's things you do in yoga where you bend down and you reach behind your heels

and you tuck your hands under your heels and then you straighten your legs out with your body flat and so you're pulling your body apart with your legs. then you straighten your legs out with your body flat. And so you're pulling your body apart with your legs. Like you're literally pulling your spine apart. You hear it go thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. Oh, yeah. It's so good for you. And you leave like my back is always like from all the years of jiu-jitsu, there's always like a pain.

There's always like a something. Yeah, there's always something. But yoga eliminates almost all that shit. Because even when I was doing it, like I realized how much scar tissue and shit that developed in my joints. Even if my arm, I can't fully straighten my left arm. And there's the one where you have to kind of put your pinkies together and lay on your arms. And that really helps stretch it out. And I'm like, oh, this stuff's not good.

And then I'm sitting on the couch at home. And I'm sitting in positions where I was like, my legs are crossed all funny. I'm like, I can't even's not good. And then I'm sitting on the couch at home and like I'm sitting in positions where I was like, my legs are crossed all funny. I'm like, I can't even cross my legs. And here I am like in like a Mahatma Gandhi here with my legs super folded in half. I was like, this is crazy. And I loved it. Since then, I wasn't consistent with it, but I said I'm going to be a yoga practitioner for life. Beautiful.

Yeah, it's great for mobility. And for people that just want to be healthier, it's for just the ability to use and move your body. I think it's amazing. The problem with guys is that negative stereotype. Oh, it's so gay to do yoga. Do it, man. Try it. Yeah. I know. It's weird that it has

that stereotype. I don't know why. It's so stupid, but it's incredible. I'm loving it. It's one of the more underestimated things in terms of its difficulty factor. It's just very underestimated. Do you think MMA fighters should be doing it? I think what you were saying about you can only do so many things is very important, which I think one of the reasons why your philosophy about only working out one time a day, no running,

I think obviously it worked out great. You had amazing success as a fighter. And obviously your endurance was spectacular. Your output was spectacular. I mean, you were an aggressive pressure fighter. So when you say that you had this sort of measured approach to training, I think it's very interesting. Some of the times I've gotten my ass kicked the most in jiu-jitsu

was after I took yoga. I took yoga in the morning, and then I went to train at night and just got fucking choked. They say you have to like give some time off from training or something because your body is so loose. The other thing is they say you don't want to overstretch your muscle because then you take it out of that optimal range to fire. So I don't know if you really overstretch things.

I don't know if that's true. I know what you're saying. I know they say that in terms of stretching before. I don't think that necessarily makes sense. I think where it makes sense is you shouldn't stretch out before you do explosive things. They used to think you should. Now they think you should warm up and get your body sweaty and loose, but that in actual stretching, while you really stretch something out, you actually lessen the amount of power that you can generate with those muscles.

But I always feel like full mobility, I mean, outside of that, I think that's where the argument is and I think it's obviously correct because there's been research to back it up but I don't think there's any research that shows that being able to do a full split in any way will take away your kicking power, right?

I mean, think about the amount of power that a lot of these guys can generate that are really flexible. I think if there's any – there might be a tradeoff. Like maybe it makes you a little less powerful but a little more mobile, and then you can generate more power and build more power up and still keep that mobility. That would be optimum. But I think there's probably a middle

ground there that you need to reach. Yeah. What do you think of, I know George St. Pierre came and made gymnastics popular. Yeah. And then Conor McGregor with that movement. What's your take on that movement? I think footwork is critical in MMA. I think it's really important to be able to get out of the way and move in as fast as possible. And that's one of the things that Conor is spectacular at. Conor is so good at sliding back, sliding back, and coming in. And there's also a totally different philosophy that's a part of striking with those little tiny gloves. It's much more difficult to put yourself up in a shell.

I mean, the way you would fight was so fucking classic. I'm not kissing your ass anymore. This is it. This is the last time. But I really loved how you were I'm not kissing your ass anymore. This is it. This is the last time. But I really loved how you were so solid, rock solid with your defense and your fundamentals. Chin tucked, gloves up high. And it was very hard to get through that.

That doesn't necessarily work the same way in MMA because guys can sneak punches through. It's a little harder. And they can sneak punches around. But I still think you have to have that as a base. I think you're right. No matter what, you're going to get in fight exchanges and there's a lot of guys who are good at closing distance so isn't it's better to at least hey i'm gonna leave and exit with my hands up rather than even exiting with my hands 100 so there's more and again the way i throw it and i can still make it work in mma because

one of the tricks that i teach my mma guys is instead of keeping that front arm pinned, you keep it up here. So it covers the center. So you're lifting your front elbow a little higher. So front elbow and kind of tucking it in. So this way, your elbow now covers the center line. Right. So now it's harder for straight punches. And you've got to think, you gave me a straight punch, and I put my elbow in front to block the center line.

If you punch your two knuckles on an MMA glove on my elbow, good luck. You're going to break your hand. Yeah. So you can really manipulate that front elbow to be able to kind of use that defense and kind of make it work. But, again, I still believe in movement. There's another issue in MMA, too, is breaking hands. A lot of guys break hands with those little gloves. But when you did old school martial arts, how did you train your hands?

Well, you know what, man? There's a lot of guys. My friend John was a nut about this. My friend John Lee, who was a U.S. national Taekwondo champion, he used to punch bricks, and he had one knuckle. Like, his two knuckles had forged into this one giant calloused knuckle. Have you seen those old Masayama guys? Oh, yeah. Those old school. his two knuckles had forged into this one giant callous knuckle. Have you seen those old Masayama guys?

Oh, yeah. Those old school. You don't even see a knuckle anymore. But then I heard that shit's super bad as you get older. You get massive arthritis and you can't write your own name anymore. I played around with doing some bag work with no gloves on. I keep my wraps on sometimes, mostly just to avoid the scraping and the cutting. But I'll hit the bags with no gloves on. And I'll literally hit my hand on different angles.

For example, I'll sit there and I'll hit the side. I'll back fist it. You need that, like I said earlier in the podcast, you need to strengthen everything. You need to strengthen all those little parts. And that's why one of my last Instagram videos, I said, add weighted, uh,

just a one pound or two pound dumbbell to your shadow boxing. Because again, you're, you're, you're working those little joints. He might not necessarily work. Like if you have those dumbbells and you rotate your hands in a circle, you're going to feel your elbow work at different movements

and different ways that help strengthen the joints. So those little minor things add up at the end. I'm sure. Did you ever squeeze, like, hand grippers or anything like that? Not really. A lot of guys are into that, too. I've gotten more into that lately. That was old school.

Yeah, there's a company called Captains of Crush. They make ones that are, are like 197 pounds to squeeze. They make them up to, I think they go even heavier than that. But I have ones at home that are 140, 160. I keep them in my car and just fucking. You know, especially for grip strength. But if you do jiu-jitsu, though, that develops naturally. Yes, it does develop naturally.

But that accentuates it, definitely accentuates it. And hanging, hanging from your hands, like from a chin-up bar. You know what? My jiu-jitsu guy at my gym loves it. He's like, man, he's like, you've got to hang. And we're like, buddy, get out of here. He's literally hanging. And it was like, he says what it's done for his joints has been incredible.

Yeah, that was another Steve. Fixed his shoulder issue. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's another Steve Maxwell thing he brought up on this podcast about being able to uh loosen the shoulders up and alleviate a lot of the impingements through hanging and people were interested in this they're listening they have if you have a shoulder injury there's a bunch of um videos of it online of while they explain it another thing that i got into recently was uh bottoms up kettlebells you know like uh this is a kettlebell here and when you most of the time you hold up kettlebells. You know, like this is a kettlebell here. And when you, most of the time you hold a kettlebell,

you'd hold it like this. Okay. Well, when you hold it the other way, you hold it like this. You really have to. Yeah, you're developing like real stability in your shoulders that you don't ordinarily. It's more like a stability.

Yeah. Because it's not like it's hard to hold it up. You know, like it's not the weight itself, not that hard to lift. This Ironman kettlebell is only 40 pounds. I was actually talking about those today. They're dope, right? Whitney Miller. Yeah.

She's with Glory now, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. She's the backstage. She was telling us about it. Yeah, she was telling me you guys are friends. Yeah, I love these things. But bottoms up kettlebells doesn't have to be an Ironman, any kind. It's very weird how hard it is to balance it in place.

It's probably like the yoga, right? It's excellent for stability. Yeah. Some of those poses, when you're on your ball of your foot balancing on one leg. Yeah. The strongest bodybuilder in the world, not a chance. What I was shocked with was how my feet would hurt. Yeah.

When I first started getting into yoga, I'm like, God, my feet are fucking killing me. When you do a standing bow pose, my feet would hurt yeah when i first started getting into yoga i'm like god my feet are fucking killing me like when you do a standing bow pose my feet would be shaking yeah i was like this it's so weird it's such a weird weird little muscles that you don't think you got to think well god i've been kicking things forever and my feet have to be strong well so back to that movement would you like that movement stuff yes i do and i don. But it's like what I was saying about yoga. Like, I think you made a really good point. Like, you can't do everything. And you probably wind up doing too much. And you want to.

Yeah. Yeah. But I think that there's something to the ability to move your body. And it's one of the things that Eddie Bravo has brought up many times. What we have seen over the last few years is break dancers who have gotten into MMA or gotten into jujitsu rather. And they're fucking phenomenal. I mean, two of Eddie's best students, Richie Martinez and Gio Martinez are fucking break dancers. So these guys are ridiculously dexterity. Their dexterity is ridiculous. So they can like stand on one hand and have the other hand up in the air and their

feet are up and they spin, they can spin on their head and unbelievable ability to move their bodies. And that translates directly into grappling. And they learn so quick. Like I had heard about these guys when they were just starting. He's like, dude, these guys, they've been doing jujitsu for three months. They're fucking choking everybody. I'm like, that's crazy. He's like, I'm telling you, it's like, just makes sense. They can move their body in a way that you can't move your body. And I think there's mobility and the ability to effectively manipulate your body in a way that's alien to other people, I think has significant advantages. And I think that comes from what that Ido Portal guy is doing.

And I think that comes from yoga. I think that comes from a lot ito portal guy is doing and i think that comes from yoga i think that comes from a lot of these break dancers but it's a matter of like how much time do you spend doing that and is it something that you start doing when you're 28 when you're already a professional fighter as a world champion or is it something you need to do when you're 15 and you know you're a crazy kid fucking around in high school and you get really good at it and then you Translate that ability to move your body directly in this martial arts I look now and as a 31 year old I look back now and I say what would I have done if I knew I was gonna end up as a

Professional fighter what would I have done from a young age in order for me to improve to where I was? I want to hear your take on it. So what would you do as a kid? I'll give you an example one of my things I would have done gymnastics from a young age. Great, great thing to say. And my other one is dancing. It's a great thing too. Yeah, that's a great thing. That's why I think Chris Brown's going to fuck up Soulja Boy. Told you. Yeah, I think the ability to move your body, you know, I mean the ability to move it really well. I mean, I noticed that going from Taekwondo to Jiu Jitsu that I had great balance. Transferable skills. Yeah. You're used to standing on one leg all the time. So your ability to maintain that position is much better than someone who's not. And I noticed that even

translating directly into yoga. But I think it depends on what kind of fighting you're trying to do. Like if I wanted to get into MMA, one of the things that I tell people is that wrestling is probably the most important skill. The ability to dictate where the fight takes place. I agree. That was a gigantic key to the success of Georges St-Pierre and the success of many, many fighters. And also the success of many strikers is their defensive wrestling, their ability to keep the fight standing.

So if you have the ability to take a guy down and you have the ability to make sure he doesn't take you down, then you can better dictate where the fight takes place. So I think, and I think it's also a skill that's really, that's, that translates so incredibly well when you learn it early in life. But striking is the scariest shit. And striking is also something that I think there's a diminished effectiveness in learning as you get older. There's something about, like, I've seen people that didn't start doing jujitsu until they're 30 and they developed elite black belt skills. How's Russell Peters, by the way?

Russell's great. Is he good? Is he good at jujitsu? Is he just starting? He eats too much. He drinks too much. He's beautiful. I love Russell.

I saw that picture. It's awesome. Yeah, man. He's training. We train. We train. You know? He gets after him, man. He drinks too much. He's beautiful. I love Russell. I saw that picture. It's awesome. Yeah, man. He's training. We train. He gets after him, man. He gets tired. I love him.

I love that guy to death. But back to the question about training. It depends on what you would want to do. So you want to be a kickboxer? You were saying. Striking, I think footwork and movement. i think the ability to get in and out you know like when you look at guys who are really good at not being there when their their opponent attacks when you look at like the guys who have fantastic footwork and i think maybe if you want to be a

striker i think really just working i think what you're saying about your your training regimen, that you would essentially, you're not running, you're not doing all these different things. You're focusing entirely on what you will do in an actual fight. So maybe you didn't do anything wrong. Maybe you did it perfect. That's it. Who knows? Yeah. It works, man.

I don't know. I just think, like you said, people are doing way too much, and that's the problem. Yeah. And they're not, things have to have a purpose. Like my strength training, there's all these new tools and these new fun things like, hey, let's do this crazy exercise where I'm doing a deadlift into a squat into some shoulder press. Why don't you deadlift? Do it well. And then why don't you squat? Do it well. And then why don't you shoulder press and do it well in a safe, proper manner? It doesn't have to be overcomplicated.

And I think people are trying to overcomplicate, and that's what kind of takes away from their success is overcomplicating things. And wouldn't you also agree that it depends entirely upon the kind of body that a person was born with? Absolutely. Genetics is huge. Yeah, it's giant. And it's sort of like the inescapable factor. If someone has genetic advantages, they just win. They even say power hitting.

I don't know. You can teach someone to hit harder, but there's just those naturally guys who can just knock you out from day one. Just a natural hitting ability. You can't teach someone to hit like George Foreman. No. No way. It is what it is. No matter how much you turn your shoulder and you put your hip into it, you're not hitting them.

Isn't it crazy too that you can't tell by looking at someone? Like there's some people you would look at them and they don't look like a big puncher but they were murderous. You know what it is? A lot of those tall guys they have that stiffness in that. It's like a stiff power that's really tough sometimes. It's like a stiff power, but it hurts.

Well, it's a mechanical advantage, you know, that leverage, which also translates to jiu-jitsu. It's a giant advantage in jiu-jitsu to have long limbs. It's tough. Back to the long point from before, but I became my best as a martial artist with color commentary. You have to know everything. You have to be able to, you have to watch a fight and you have to be able to assess instantly what's going on, how they're doing it. You got to do it on the fly.

You don't have time, right? So you have to be able to pick things up quickly. And now I'm at the point where I can look at someone as soon as they get into their stance. I'll be like, okay, you got to do this, this, this, and this. Well, it's funny too when you can tell like when a guy's going to kick. Like, oh, here comes a right kick. You just see it. You see that back heel come up. You see him leaning a little bit.

Or especially when the guy's going to spin. That's the big giveaway. You see that left hip turn a little. The insteps that you step out. Yeah, you can see it. You can see it. How do you think, would you be a good coach? If I was invested in it, I would be the best coach that I could be, for sure. And that's one of the reasons

why I stopped teaching. I stopped teaching when I started doing stand-up comedy because I wasn't being a very good teacher anymore. Just because you didn't put the time and the effort into it? It wasn't where my head was at. My head was now, I was, you know, there was no, like I said, there was no money in fighting when I was fighting there was nothing and so unless I was you were a boxer you weren't gonna make any money that was before fear factor yeah way before so there was essentially no way to have a career other than teaching and so when I started getting into stand-up comedy I realized like I got talked into it by guys I used to train with and when I started doing doing it, I realized, like, oh, wow, like, I could make a living doing

this. Like, this is actually, there's a real path. Like, there's guys that I know that make a living doing this. Where everybody I know that's fighting is broke or they're slurring their words. Yeah. And, like, guys from the gym that would be in gym wars all the time and now they're all fucked up. They don't want to know where they parked their car.

There was a lot of that shit that was scaring the fuck out of me. So when I started getting into comedy, I quit teaching. And I suffered financially because of it. But I would rather do that at the time. My mind was I would rather suffer financially than give anybody a half-assed coaching job. So coaching MMA, I think, is one of the most difficult things in all sports. I'm sure coaching kickboxing is probably very similar in that regard in that you're so invested in your students. There's so much on the line.

You have to be. Yeah. There's nothing you can do. You can train them as much as you can, but you've got to let them go when they get into that ring or get into that cage and like, you know, and hope that it all comes together. But the other problem I find with MMA is a lot of coaches. There's too many coaches. I find you have a lot of these guys have a boxing coach that's telling them to box a certain way. Then all of a sudden they're going, Hey, I got to do Muay Thai now. So they have a Mu thai coach is now telling them to do muay thai this way then all of a sudden hey we gotta do spinning shit so let's do it here so now all of a sudden you have three different coaches all telling you to do different things

yeah so now this poor fighter is going to go to the ring yeah you might not know you might know everything from all of them but what are you going to do you're going to get confused that's where again basics are important. That's why I don't think you should overcomplicate shit. So I know if you're going to jab, I know how I'm going to do it. I don't have time to sit there and be like, okay, I know I can parry. I know I can slip. I know I can time with the low kick.

You have to know. Right. And I think with too many coaches are complicating shit for these guys where they think they have to hit all of these things so they're going to all these different coaches and it's way over complicated. So who do you listen to? How do you listen to? Which way is the

right way? Which one is the wrong way? My boxing coach is telling me to turn my heel out my kickboxing coach is telling me to keep my front foot pointing forward. Which is the right way? It's a good point and I think that's where guys like Matt Hume guys like Firas Ahavi My boxing coach is telling me to keep my front foot pointing forward, which is the right way. It's a good point. And I think that's where guys like Matt Hume, guys like Firas Ahavi, that's why they're so important. Because they're overall MMA coaches.

And also I think what's really important about guys like Matt and Firas is that both of those guys are highly accomplished martial artists in all disciplines. So they really know how to put it all together. Like Firas is a black belt in jiu-jitsu. He's an outstanding striker. So he knows how to combine all those things together. I think that's so critical. Greg Jackson was probably the same way. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's maybe a dozen of them on the planet and that's a problem if you're not near any of those and you start out with someone and then that coach becomes like a mentor figure to you. And then you realize, oh, my coach is kind of limited in a lot lot of ways it's very difficult to separate yourself it's hard to see

that yes and it's kind of you can't be a fighter who you put all your trust into this man to help you out then all of a sudden you're like oh he's lacking things yeah like i remember um with uh with mitch gagnon he came to me and he like, he had a guy working with him all the time. And I was just kind of like, I go to his friend who asked me to help him with his strike. I was like, man, I don't know if I can help this guy. He's just so bad technically at this point where I'm like, it's a lot of work I have to do to kind of fix and clean things up. And that's my way.

But he was so good at just being a beast and not caring that he was successful. But when I showed him my way of putting things, he's like, I wish I learned this earlier. I wish I had this. And then there was kind of sometimes you can kind of get angry about it, man. Why did I waste like so many years with this guy if this is the way it should have been done from the beginning? Yeah. I mean, obviously people are limited geographically as far as like having a good coach near them. But I urge anybody listening to this to put the research in before you join a gym. It's so much harder to unlearn something than it is to learn it.

So when you have like one of the things that I would deal with in teaching Taekwondo is guys who came from other martial arts that didn't know how to do certain things correctly. Like their knees would be down. They didn't lift the knee above the hip. They didn't know how to do certain things correctly. Like their knees would be down. They didn't lift the knee above the hip. They didn't get real power into anything. They'd never worked with a kicking bag. They'd never worked with a heavy bag. They'd just done stuff in the air. And so they didn't have any power. And so you'd have to try to re-teach them. And when they would get tired, it'd be the same thing. Foot up, knee down, everything'd be all screwed up. And you're like, no, no, no. You got to go, even when you're tired, you got to stick to the proper technique and they, you would fall into what you learned first. Yeah. It's tough. Yeah. It's tough. And you,

you always want to trust that person because you can't, you have to. And that's a lot of the fighters, um, confidence comes from their coach. Yeah. So you have to, but it's kind of hard. It's very hard. It's hard to find that balance. And it's also, you have to have a relationship with that coach where you like them. Yeah. That's hard too. So if you were to have an MMA fight, where would you go? Man.

Is that putting you on the spot? No, but I think those guys that you talked about were there. Firas Ahabi, Matt Hume. Those two guys are, in my opinion, like cream of the crock. Duke Rufus. You know, I think you would have to have someone also that sees what you do well and says, well, this is obviously your primary base. You're really good at this.

So let's work on all these other aspects too. But we're not going to try to take this away from you and turn you into a wrestler. And then you're going to fight a real wrestler and get fucked up. Yeah. you and turn you into a wrestler you know and then you're gonna fight a real wrestler and get fucked up yeah it's i mean and it's it's such a creative approach because you're creating a fighter i mean you take someone and you're you're putting all the tools together and you're helping them helping mold them but then it's also up to them too it's up to them to be improvisational inside the ring or the octagon and to figure out how to put those things together and everyone's got their own little style their own yeah their own approach you know and again

a lot of the differences like i mean just because i do something differently than someone else doesn't necessarily mean their way is the wrong way right right of course i'm gonna believe my system is the best system and the way but it's not to say it's the only way. No, there's no only way. And that's what I love. But you have to be open to know that there's other ways. And that's where I've been touching around on. Have you read the Book of Five Rings? Yes.

And he talks about you have to know your weaknesses. You have to know other arts in order to make your art and style the best. That's Musashi. Nice. That's the tattoo. I've been reading it i know i can only read one page at a time because i'm like shit i gotta sit there i gotta reflect on it's deep man

oh he was a deep dude i mean he killed 60 people with swords yeah oh yeah one-on-one combat miyamoto musashi one of the greatest samurais ever and during a weird phase in history you know he was a ronin traveling around just getting in sword fights. Crazy. And doing calligraphy and art. Yeah. He opened my mind to this idea that you have to be balanced in order to be effective in combat. You can't have any holes in your mental game. And one of the ways to not have holes in the mental game was that he would approach everything as like art, everything you did, whether you were writing your name, whether you were, uh, you know, filling out a form, driving your car, no, no cars back then, obviously, but everything that you did, you would do with excellence. Yeah.

He was a bad motherfucker. Oh, for sure. I'm loving it, man. Like it's deep. It's great. And you talk about it and you look at it and you can look at yourself sometimes and be like, yeah, man, I'm the modern day of some of the stories he does. Like I did that in a different way, you know? and i think that's really cool for me to see and read

yeah because it translates you know this guy lived that life and and then it's just a different time yeah and then sat down and tried to relay the information that he had accumulated over this life of fucking people up with swords i have have a random question. I'd ask you about fighting. True or false, was it a real story that you wanted to fight Wesley Snipes? It wasn't my idea. Okay. Because I always wanted to know about that. Yeah, that was a real story. One of the original producers of the UFC, Campbell McLaren, who's a buddy of mine.

Yeah, I did a reality show with him. What was it? I did Combates Americas. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a guest coach on it. Well, they're still doing that show. They're still having fights. He's still putting on fights.

It was cool because one of the guys that I was like a guest kickboxing coach on the show now fights with Glory, Daniel Morales. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome, man. Yeah. That was a cool experience. So he came to me with the idea because Wesley Snipes had tax problems.

That's what it was about. So yeah, we're going to do it. So you would have? I was going to, yeah. Would it have been a UFC sanction? Yeah, yeah. That would have been interesting. Who knows?

Yeah. You know? That's why I asked earlier. I was like, should I ask him or not? I'm like, I got to ask. Well, he had a martial arts background. I know he did a lot of karate and I know he was a good kicker. You could tell when you throw punches and, that he knew how to execute techniques.

But he'd never fought, you know, and he had no jiu-jitsu at all. Zero. And I was like, well, good luck. Was he thinking about taking it? He just took it. I mean, we had lawyers. We had signed contracts, or we had negotiated contracts. Aren't you an unlockable character on the UFC game?

Lockable. Yeah, unlockable, yeah. Is that, yeah. Unlockable. Why does that say wrong? Yeah, you an unlockable character on the UFC game? Lockable. Yeah, unlockable. Unlockable. Why does that say wrong? Yeah, you can unlock me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a character. I don't know.

It's weird that you have to do some weird fucking thing to do it. You have to do that. What is it called? It's the old Konami code. It's like a well-known code. In order to get you on the game? Yeah, you can do that and you can unlock me. Yeah.

Do you fight as you? No, I don't play video games. No, no not to do i have a problem with my brain i can't get involved in games i get too obsessed yeah i'm i have an addictive personality and i try to avoid all things that are negative or waste time that could be addictive you know you know yeah it's crazy you have to know that you know it's crazy too like i've worked in uh because i work with kids with special needs and i work a lot with autism and i realized and i was like man these kids like just so obsessed with certain things and routine and then i started looking at other people in my life i'm like maybe we all have that little bit of that autistic traits in us you know like you have to be obsessed for me to be a

world champion. I had to be obsessed with training. You can't just do it and be okay. Like, cause these you know, people living with autism, they're just so obsessed with that one thing. Like I have students who are so obsessed with like the train system and then all of a sudden they can't think of anything else, but the train system you can try to and they'll tell you anywhere how to get in toronto they'll tell you which bus which way the most intelligent people you've ever met but if you ask them a simple question they won't know it because they just don't care their mind is so focused on one thing and autism is just beautiful and crazy at the same time i think it's beautiful to see someone so obsessed and not caring about other things than what they're

focused on doesn't work well in society obviously but they're so absorbed in it. And I think back and I was like, man, a lot of us have these personalities to be able to be so obsessed and so routine. Like these guys, these individuals with autism have to do everything in a particular way, certain time, a little bit of OCD in there. I think to be successful in things, you kind of have to have that little bit of personality. Yeah, and they can make incredible progress. And that's one of the things that a lot of those people are recruited by Silicon Valley companies, like specifically recruited because they know that they can achieve some incredible feats of success.

I have a student at my school that probably knows UFC more than you. He's literally crazy. He knows everything. Every fighter, every name, where they're from, what they do, you name it, he knows it. Any fighter. You can ask him from one.

I had a guy talk to me about this once and he argued that it's potentially an evolutionary trait. What we're watching is the next level of human intelligence. We're seeing it in like little blips and leaps. And a non-reliance on emotion. And that also he believes that this is, that, you know, human beings are interacting more with computers than ever before. And they're interacting less with people in a lot of circumstances. And he thinks that what you're seeing is like this eventual transition

between humans now and humans of the future. Yeah, things have changed. Yeah, it's trippy. Listen, Joe, this is a fucking awesome podcast. Oh, yeah. We got to get out of here because I got to go take you freezing. And I got to wrap this bitch up and go home. But thank you, brother.

I'm glad we did it, appreciate it man I'm so happy to be here finally we finally did it too and Glory in Los Angeles this Friday, you can watch it on UFC Fight Pass two world title fights we got Israel Adesanya Jason Wilmes, Matt Embry Robin Van Roosmalen and you'll be there

I'll be there and if you haven't seen kickboxing this is your chance, check it out I guarantee you, you'll become a fan. Or I don't want to talk to you. All right. See you tomorrow. Bye.