The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #109 with Gordon Ryan

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

Gordon Ryan is a submission grappler and mixed martial artist currently signed to ONE Championship.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Well, welcome man, thanks for doing this, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Long time coming. How the fuck did you rise so far ahead of everyone else in the jiu-jitsu world? Let me just tell everybody before things get started.

Gordon is undeniably the best pound-for-pound jiu-jitsu player on earth. Not just the best, but pretty, pretty, it's a pretty good statement to say that you're the best ever. And you're only 25. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. How the fuck does that happen? So I'm going to go ahead and give credit to John.

I mean, I think that without him, I maybe would have been successful. I would have been, you know, maybe the best in the world at some point in my career. But I don't think that without John, I would be where I am right now. And I don't think that I would have gotten this good, uh, and in this amount of time, you know, I've only, I've been training 10 years. I've been competing professionally for five years. And, uh, I think that, you know, a big part of the reason why I am where I am is because, because of John's coaching. Yeah. And we're, we're talking about John Donahue for people who don't know who is a literal genius and a mastermind in jiu-jitsu and a true mad scientist. And watching him coach you guys is very fascinating because he's so serious and stoic.

And Gordon Ryan, pass over the left leg, Gordon Ryan, post, like the way he talks. It's really interesting. He says your full name, too. It's very interesting. Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonin, Craig Jones. It's says your full name too it's it's really it's very interesting gordon ryan gary toning craig jones it's always it's always the full the full name yeah why what is he's such an odd duck he does it to address us um because a lot of times like if you've got like nicky for example like there's a lot of guys named nicky so he makes sure he makes sure you know he's talking to you when he says nicky ryan nicky rod craig jones gordon ryan so you know

that you know that when you hear your name being called, your first and last name, you know that, okay, this person is addressing you in a room of 5,000, 10,000 people. He's such an unusual human being. There is not a single person on the planet Earth like John Donahue. One of the most brilliant guys I've ever met, obsessed with jujitsu mostly. Like, if you got a pie chart of his brain, it would be like, he's like 20% room for other shit 80% of his brain is jiu-jitsu Yeah, I mean, it's not it's not even just your jitsu. It's just martial arts in general like I mean People who know John on a personal level and I've trained with John know that John knows just as much just as much about

Mmas those or even more about MMA that he does about jiu-jitsu He's been coaching MMA with George and with Chris Weidman for longer than than he does about jiu-jitsu. He's been coaching MMA with George and with Chris Weidman for longer than he's been coaching jiu-jitsu. I mean, he's only been coaching professional jiu-jitsu athletes for five years. And I've watched him personally teach judo privates to judo Olympians. I watched him teach wrestling privates to wrestling world team members, wrestling Olympians. He knows just as much about the other martial arts as he does about jiu-jitsu. It's crazy.

Yeah, and never walks around without a rash guard on. That's also correct. Which is the honest thing ever. I've seen him one time ever with a t-shirt on because we went to Long Island to train with Chris Weidman one time, and he forgot his change of rash guards. So he had a street rash guard on, and he didn't have a second rash guard to change into, and Chris didn't have a rash guard for him, so they gave him this pink flamingo t-shirt that he ended up...

We did a whole session with Chris Weidman. It was right before he was going to fight Luke Rockhold the second time, which ended up never happening. But we did this whole session with John with like this pink tropical T-shirt on. And then he changed out of the T-shirt to get back into a street rash guard and leave to go home. Like it was just like, I'm just like, okay, this is happening. I posted it. Everyone was freaking out about it.

Just how crazy is it that he has a street rash guard? Yeah. He's got street rash guards. He's got training rash guards. And he's got like his nighttime like dinner date rash guards. Like he's got like a date rash guard. He's got a rash guards. He's got Training rash guards and he's got like his nighttime like dinner date rash guards like he's got like a date rash guard He's got a dinner rash guard like he's got it all he's got it all sorted out So if he goes on a date with a woman he wears a rash guard Oh, yeah

He's got like he's got like this really nice like underarm like this gray under armor sweatshirt that he or Rash guard that he puts on and like you know like when John comes out in one of his fancy rash guards you're like, okay He's not fucking around now. You're like, this guy's like, you got to do it. You're like, all right, this guy means business tonight. Has anybody ever asked him what the fuck is going on? Yeah. I mean, so he just, he just likes to wear rash guards because of the fact that they dry fast. The fact that they're cool, they keep you cool. They keep you warm. If they get wet, they dry fast. cool. They keep you cool. They keep you warm. If they get wet, they dry fast.

And they're just tight-fitting. He likes tight-fitting clothes. So he just prefers to wear them. He thinks they're more efficient than t-shirts are. It's just so odd. But that's part of John Donner. Always has a fanny pack. Respect. I respect the fanny pack. One of the great mysteries of the world

is what he has inside that fanny pack. It's kind of thick. It is. It's inside that fanny pack. It's kind of thick. It is. It's a large fanny pack. He's got a lot of stuff inside there. It's just so fascinating to watch what he's done in coaching this Don Herd death squad. He's unquestionably the greatest jiu-jitsu coach on earth. And this is also widely regarded. The way you're widely regarded as the best pound-for-pound grappler, he's widely regarded as the best jiu-jitsu coach on earth and this is also widely regarded like the way you're widely regarded as

the best pound for pound grappler he's widely regarded as the best jiu-jitsu coach and it's it's um it's really interesting to see that you guys just have been dominating the grappling scene and to watch all this play out and to see people study you guys but still not be able to catch up. Yeah, I mean, what most people do is they just see like a general outline of what we do. But no one looks at the specifics of what we're doing. They say, oh, you know, Gordon's a good leglocker, let me try to do leglocks, or Gordon's trapping hands from the back, let me try to do that. But they don't see the very specific details.

And the specific details are what's going to be the difference between finishing a high-level guy and having a high-level guy escape. So whatever it does is they just see the general idea and have the general outline of what we're doing, and they try to just copy that. But when you just try to copy the best guys, if you just try to copy everyone else, you get the same results as everybody else. You have to go further than what the best guys are doing, and you have to innovate. And I look at the other best guys in the world, and I say are they doing you know that works against the other high level guys and how can i make that better not just let me try to arbitrarily copy what they're trying to do now what is missing in like if you take the rest of the people that are in the top 10 like what are they doing differently what everyone does in jiu-jitsu is they try to do the least amount of work possible to win a jiu-jitsu match, right?

So they try to jump past your guard, they score an advantage, they score a couple points, and then for the next seven minutes they do nothing. Whereas what we try to do is we try to take the hardest route to a victory, and we try to submit the guy. So what you see is a complete, there's just a complete different mindset between what the rest of the guys are doing and what we're trying to do. We're trying to go out and we're not satisfied unless we hit a submission. And in my case, sometimes I call the submission and I'm trying to, you know, go out and hit a specific submission. But, you know, they're happy just going out and having a match where there's 10 minutes in the feet. They just hang on each other's collar ties and they win a decision, and they run around beating their chest like they just,

they did something. So just the mindset for winning in competition is completely different. Now, how did that happen? How did jiu-jitsu get to be this sport where you have so many stalemates, you have so many guys that do this thing where they run around just collar tying each other and pushing each other around, and no one ever takes a chance. No one ever realizes that, you know, hey, we've only got four minutes to go. I got to make something happen. I think it's training program. I think that the rule sets mean very little. If you look at a guy like Hodger Gracie, no matter what rule set he competes in, he's trying to finish you. If you look at me, no matter what rule set you go into, I'm trying to finish you. If it's EBI rules, I'm trying to finish you. If it's IBJJF rules,

I'm trying to finish you. And, you know, I think that most people's training programs are built around positional control and doing the least amount of work possible to win. You know, people train stalling tactics. You know, we don't do that. We just try to get better at Jiu-Jitsu and better at submissions. Whereas our training program is built around control that leads to submissions. No matter what rule set we go in to compete under, we're always trying to control the guy and then submit him. Whereas most people, they have a training program built around positional advances where they're just trying to do whatever they can to win and a win's a win and however they win, they're happy with it. What year did you start with John? How long ago? I started training with him

the first time I ever started training with him was 2014. Was that the first time you trained? No, I started training 2000 late 2010 almost 2011 with Miguel Benitez. He was one of Ricardo Almeida's brown belts owned the school and this guy Miguel Benitez was a blue belt under the guy who owned that one one of Ricardo's affiliate schools I started training under him from like white to mid-level blue belt and then Gary actually took over Gary Tonin took over the school when I was like a purple belt. And then purple belt, I started training part-time with John because I just graduated high school and I had to go to college and work to afford to get to the city. But then somewhere around mid-level purple belt, I think it was like 2000, mid to late 2014 is when I started training with John full-time.

So I've been training with John full-time like, you know, six years or so and Has the training changed since you first started like and if you discuss this with John because he's got such a complex system of training and and taking people through Positional dominance to submission like has this evolved during the time that you've been with him like what was it was it like at the beginning? Yeah, at first it was just, he was just trying to get better at jujitsu, specifically better at leg locks, because the big hole in the high level competition jujitsu scene was leg locks. Nobody really knew how to do leg locks well. So the first couple of years of us training was just him trying to get us competent and then eventually to be the best in leg locking.

And then once we got there and once we could beat the best guys in the world or at least hang with the best guys in the world, then it was more specific towards winning under certain rule sets. You know, EBI came along and, you know, okay, how can now you guys can do jiu-jitsu, you're competent everywhere, how can you succeed and how can you beat certain players or how can you win under specific rule sets? So it went from just a broad idea of initially getting better at jiu-jitsu, just as a whole, and then more specifically, how can I win ADCC? How can I win EBI?

How can I beat this guy? How can I beat that guy? But has his training program evolved in terms of, like, how he takes people through advancements like how they how they start out in learning and then get to a place of a position where they're a black belt in competition like does he have this all written out like how is he how is he doing this yeah i mean he doesn't tell us too much about it he kind of just comes in and he shows up and he teaches moves and you're like okay this is what john what John's teaching. This is what we should be, we should be, uh, we should be doing. Um, but, uh, a lot of it has, we used to just do all open

rounds. Now we have a lot more positional rounds in place, uh, where we start in certain positions so that if we get to those specific positions, even though people have been training for twice as long as us, we've been training a lot longer in those specific niche positions, uh, than they have. So we actually have a lot more experience in those positions than they do, even though they've been training jiu-jitsu for much longer than we have. So our whole thing is to get to our key positions where we know where if we have one breakthrough, if I can get to the guy's back or I can get to the guy's legs, we've been in those static positions a lot longer than the other guys have. And even though they've been training twice or three times as long as we have, we have a lot more experience in those static positions a lot longer than the other guys have. And even though they've been training twice or three times as long as we have,

we have a lot more experience in those domains than they do. Now, did that start with EBI where they have that very specific two-option positions after the first initial time period? That was a big part of it. When EBI came out, we actually came into the gym one day, and we tried to do back escapes and it was just the worst workout ever. Like we had a 0% escape rate, nobody escaped. And John's like, fuck, like this is going to be a real problem. If someone locks a body triangle on you, you know, like none of us

figured out how to get out. He comes in the next day and he finds a match between Hodger Gracie and Tim Kennedy in MMA. And Tim Kennedy successfully escaped Hodger's back control multiple times during the match. So this guy went home and spent the entire night looking for matches where high-level guys can escape the back. And he came in, and he taught us the escapes that Tim Kennedy used versus Hodger. And we went from one day having a 0% escape rate to like an 80% escape rate the next day. And then we kind of just built it from there and everything snowballed. And then, you know, we ended up dominating the EBIs. So it really takes a combination of things. It takes obsessed athletes and it takes an obsessed trainer and an obsessed trainer. And in one way,

there's something interesting about John in that he's injured. Like, his knee's all fucked up. He's had a hip replacement from rugby, right? Yeah, yeah. And he can't compete. But when he was training early in his career, like, everybody used to talk about what a motherfucker he was. I remember it early in his...

Even being all fucked up, like, he was still beating up like the best guys in the world it was crazy like imagine only being able to use one of your legs like i tore my lcl and i was like there's no way i can train with the blue belt right now never mind having to train with the best guys in the world yeah it's um it's pretty remarkable but his mind is so unusual it's so extraordinary and when you take the two the combination of that like he's got such a dedicated crew of assassins too this is also interesting because it seems like his dedication and his obsession is at least partially contagious yes and then you guys also motivate each other and the success obviously the donna her death squad is so well known and so

successful that must be motivating as well and it's also attracting a lot of other killers that want to be like you guys, that come there to train and learn and grow. But it's such a unique combination. Yeah, I mean, you see a guy like John who's injured, and he's just miserable some days because he's in so much pain. He comes in every single day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and he gives his best every single session. So, you know, you as an athlete,

this guy's giving you all that he can for not asking anything in return. The only thing he's asking for is that you show up. So, like, you have basically a series of cheat codes in front of you, and they're there all year round every single day you kind of feel like a shit bag if you don't show up to train so it's like you know this guy this guy's giving you everything it's like okay if i don't show up like i'm kind of an asshole we went to dinner after the last uh event that they had here when you uh fought wagner rocha and uh john was outlining what happens when guys come to train. Like guys have never been there before.

He's like, I'll see you tomorrow. And tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow. Like you guys train like this every day? Seven days a week. Seven days a week. That's what's crazy. Like there's no days off?

No days off. Is there an argument against that? I don't really think so. I mean, if we're tired we just train lighter you know there's no even if I feel like I'm just completely beat up and I just I don't want to get up and go to training even if I just go there

and I train really light and I'm there mentally and you're thinking about the sport I mean you're getting better whereas if you just spend the day on the beach or something then you're not thinking about the sport and it hinders progression so I think that you know some people argue you need a the day on the beach or something, then you're not thinking about the sport, and it hinders progression. So I think that, you know, some people argue you need a rest day, you need this, you need that. I mean, if I have a rest day, I can rest, and I can not train hard, and I just go lighter.

Maybe I work on submissions. Maybe I'm playing defensive the whole time, and I get submitted 10 times during the session. Who cares? You know, you're training lighter, but you're actively resting, and you're still thinking about the sport. So you're there mentally. You know you're training lighter, but you're you're actively resting and you're still thinking about the sport, so you're there mentally That's very controversial though because most trainers in most sports will tell you that you need rest days That you need days where you do nothing and that even days where you don't even think about your sport

Because that's actually going to refresh your enthusiasm. Yeah, John's the exact opposite like for us he says like In order to stay interested in the sport, you need to be constantly working towards goals, and you constantly need to be innovating so that you're working on new things. I mean, people get bored with jujitsu when they're working on the same thing for six months at a time, a year at a time, they're not getting any better, they hit a plateau. And then they feel like, you know, I've been doing the same shit for the last two years, I'm bored of it, I don't really want to do this anymore. Whereas with us every day, it's something new. You know, every week is something new. Every six months you turn into a completely different grappler.

So it's easy to stay interested in a sport that you come in and you know that you're going to show up to a session. And if you don't show up to that session, that John's going to teach something that you probably have never seen before or something that's new. And you know, you're going to come in the next day and everyone's going to be trying to hit it on you. You'd seen before, something that's new. And you're going to come in the next day and everyone's going to be trying to hit it on you. You're going to be like, what the fuck is this? When did you teach this? And you're like, oh, yesterday when you weren't here.

And it's like, oh, okay. That makes sense. Wow. So it really does demand a synergy between an obsessed trainer and obsessed students. Yeah. Like John goes home, we're like bullshitting right now talking,

or like you go home and watch TV and relax. John goes home and he studies tape. Like, John just, like, what he does for fun is he studies tape on various martial arts. Like, you reference any fight or any wrestling match or any boxing match or jiu-jitsu match, like, John will give you, like, a full background story on the whole. Like, he just, he knows everything, not even just about martial arts. He just knows everything about everything. He's, like like the closest thing to Google that you can get, in my opinion. You just ask him a question about any given subject, and he knows something about

it. So when he goes home every night and he studies tape, you know for a fact that the next day he's coming in and he's showing you something that he watched from like the huge like the other day he showed us something that uh uh an asian kid hit from the u23 world championships in like 2018 that he was like that uh that he was he was uh taking people down with in the wrestling championships and it's just like this guy like went home and like started watching the u23 worlds from like 2018 like who does that? He and Lex Friedman had a conversation while we were at dinner where Lex brought up some obscure wrestlers from Dagestan. And John was like, oh, yes, yes. And he starts going into detail about these people. That's crazy.

And also he studies why they're successful. Like that's a fascinating thing, too. You know, he doesn't just study the fact that this is a group of people doing things It's like why they're outliers and so he analyzes what what causes an outlier Yeah, why are these guys the best in the world? And and then he applies that and he really does I mean that's the the crazy thing is that when you look at the the Domination of your team and you look at it over the course of six years,

it's relentless, like it's continual, it's constant, and it keeps going. And because of this philosophy of seven days a week training and constant innovation and always refreshing the mind with new techniques and always stimulating the athletes with new options, you're seeing this never-ending progression where, as I look at other teams and you get these elite guys who are at a world championship level, and even elite guys at a world championship level, even though

they win world championships and they do really well, they are stagnant in their progress, at least observationally. Yeah. You know, they don't look any different. What most people do is they get to a certain level, usually in jiu-jitsu it's black belt, and they coast on that technique. And they get a little bit more physically mature. The most high-level competitors get their black belt at 22, 23, 24,

and they get physically more mature until they're 30, but they don't ever progress technically. Whereas with us, every six months, if I fought myself a 2019 ADCC right now, I would crush myself. So that's the thing. It's always constant progression working towards new goals and new heights. What is your ultimate end goal?

Do you have an ultimate end goal? Now, here you are so young to be not just the best on the planet, but arguably the best of all time at 25. Yeah. I just want to finish my career, and I want people to think that, okay, there's just absolutely no chance that anyone could ever touch what you've done in your career. Like right now, sure, I'm arguably the best of all time, but people can surpass my records.

When I finish my career, I want people to sit back and think, wow, no one's ever going to get close to that. That's a wild goal. But that keeps you motivated? Yeah. Since you're already the best. Because you're in a weird situation. I should tell people that don't understand jiu-jitsu or don't know the landscape. You can't get fights.

You're having a really hard time getting fights. I mean, props to Wagner for stepping up because he's a smaller guy and, you know, and he's one of the rare elite black belts that did choose to step up because you're in this weird position right now where people are worried about their reputation. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy because, like, I'm, like, one of the nicer guys to compete against. Like, I don't rip submissions. I'm not, not like smacking you in the face or poking you in the eyes. Like I'm, I'm pretty mild as far as like, you know, being like very physical when

I compete against you. I'm actually pretty nice when I compete against you. If you look at a guy like Tyson, like he was just murdering people and he had no shortage of fights. Like everyone wanted to fight him. It's just so strange that there's not even strikes involved that I just can't get people to actually step up to compete It's it's the weird. That's a financial thing though Cuz when Tyson was involved at least you get a couple million bucks you get your head knocked off It could be like people are fighting me for like six six thousand dollars. Yeah, so I mean it's definitely it's definitely You know that if you're if you're if you're going to get out get knocked out by Tyson for ten million dollars It's a little bit then it's a little bit different than getting embarrassed by a shit-talking fucking Gordon for like five grand.

That's the other thing that's unusual about you, is that when people think about successful martial artists, they think of these stoic warriors who bow to each other and show respect. You talk so much shit. And you talk so much shit to people online. You go back and forth with people online. You post pictures of them looking stupid. You make, like, memes.

You have all these things you put out. You use social media. And most people who do things the way you do it suck. Yes. That's what's crazy. It's like to be the best of the best but also to be talking mad shit all the time. It's one of those combinations where I'm sure your opponents are like, fuck!

Yeah, well, if you talk shit and you don't have the skills to actually back it up, you just look like a clown. Yeah. Like you're like a guy like Dylan who just talks shit on Instagram, but then he's like 18 and 16 as a black belt. Like he has like two fights against some guys in Bellator. But if you can go out and you can talk shit, you can say, I'm going to do this. You can say, I'm going to finish this match by triangle and then go out and finish the match by triangle. People are like, oh, shit.

Even if they hate you, they have no choice but to listen to you and respect you. Well, I like what you did with your first, one of your matches that I saw, it was a couple matches ago, you said you were going to finish with a mounted triangle, but you said that before the match. A mounted armbar, yeah. Mounted armbar, excuse me. And then this last match, you drew a picture of a triangle, put it in an envelope,

and then gave it to the commentator and said, don't open this until after the match. Yeah. And you finished by triangle. But that time you didn't let him know. The first time you said it in advance, though, right? I said it right before the match, so he probably didn't see it. Oh, okay. I posted it right before the match,

but the chances of him looking at it when he was getting ready to walk out were probably pretty low. Whereas the one with Wagner, there's no way he could have seen it because I put it in the envelope and they didn't open it until after the event. Yeah, because there was times when you had him in good positions where I was wondering if you were letting him go, because you said that you wanted to maul him. Yeah, I wanted to abuse him for the first 20 minutes

and then finish him with 10 minutes left, which is what I did. If I wanted to triangle him before that, I could have probably done it pretty easily, especially on the back, but that's just not what I wanted to do. Why did you want to punish him like that? Just because we have some history. He used to, whenever we competed he would always be like super dirty and like you know putting his hands in my face and he's just like a very aggressive style competitor and when I was like 18, 19 he would always like walk around backstage and like knock my crowns off

my head. He used to wear, for folks who need to know this, he used to wear a Burger King crown. Burger King crown, and now I've updated to a plastic crown. I walk around tournaments with a robe, a king's robe, and a crown on my head. And then everyone's like, who's this asshole? I'm like, I'm the asshole who's going to win the tournament tomorrow. So I show up, and it's just super obnoxious. And then I just show up, and I just beat everybody up and everyone's like, wow, that fucking asshole with the crown.

But it's such a weird combination. Like the first picture with the robot, I showed up to Nogi Worlds like that. And I was coaching the day before. So I show up and I'm just walking around the pyramid in California like that.

And I'm just coaching my blue belt students like the team members They're like in that and people are like wow this guy's really like dressed like that right now I'm like yeah I'm really dressed like that and then I just show up the next day and double gold and everyone's like wow that fucking asshole Have you always been like that? Have you always been a guy who talked a lot of shit? No it all started when? that? Have you always been a guy who talked a lot of shit? No. It all started when I won my first EBI and people were giving me shit about how I shouldn't have beat Yuri. And when people started hating online, I'm like, you know what? Fuck this. I'm not going to be quiet. I'm just going to go

back at them. Because I realized early on that no matter how nice you are, people are always going to talk shit. No matter what you do, people are going to talk shit. Like George is the nicest guy ever, and people are like, what a fucking pussy, that guy sucks, he just lays in praise. People give George shit, and George is the nicest guy ever. So I'm like, well, if people are going to talk shit regardless, I may as well just say and do what I want and just be authentic and have fun with it. That's funny. But it seems almost out of place for someone who's as good as you are.

Yeah. I mean, most people with this kind of talent don't do it, but it's fun for me. And I just feel like it just upsets so many people. And they take it so seriously, and I don't. And I'm just sitting there laughing behind my keyboard, and everyone's pulling their hair out on the other side of the screen. And I know that it upsets so many people and uh you know it's just it's easy to run with it it's just when you see people react like cyborg in particular the second fight that you have with cyborg how many times you twice twice okay the second one the first one you submitted him with the second

one he's literally swinging at your head like making it look like he's touching your head but he's actually smacking you yes he's just he smacked me like I making it look like he's touching your head, but he's actually smacking you. Yes, he smacked me, like, I think it was 14 times in the match, and then finally, like, the last second of the match, they DQ'd him for it. Last second of the match? Yeah, nine minutes and 59 seconds. The Brazilian refs all waited until the last possible second,

and they DQ'd him for smacking me. And then I won by DQ because he was smacking me. Did you talk to him about it afterwards? We talked, we kind of squashed our beef and now we're cool. Like I was like, you know, this is all fun for me. Like don't take it, like don't take it so personal. It's like you can't, like it's just business. Like you can't, you can't take it personally.

Like sure, some things that I do, I, like first of all, I only attack guys who have started shit with me or started shit with my team or inadvertently or passive-aggressively. You talk shit about our team or myself. The problem is I just go way further than is necessary. They start at level two, and I just go to level 1,000 right away, and I just don't stop. They talk shit about me like 2015 and 2021, and I'm still just berating them every day. I just go way overboard and that's what people get upset about. But I never

actually attack someone who hasn't started with me first. It's just funny, the dedication to shit talking. It's a full-time job. But now I can't even do it because Instagram just erases all my posts. Really? Yeah, Instagram, I just stopped pretty much using Instagram. I just post once a day or once every other day now.

But Instagram deletes. If I go on and I comment something and I attack a hater who attacked me and retaliate, 60% of my posts just get erased now. So I would spend hours a day on Instagram. It's like a full-time job. But now it's not even worth my time because I know that if I go on and I write, you know, 30 comments, 20 of them are going to get erased. So it's not even worth my time dealing with it anymore. What do you think is going on? You think someone's reporting them? I think it's a combination of people reporting it.

And I think it's just the algorithm is like, had been like, has a hit on me. And I think that like, like, as it shows you your violations, I have, like, hundreds of violations, like, 300 violations. Like, I tell people to kill themselves and stuff. So, like, now they just started threatening to delete my account, and they delete, like, all my comments. So it's not even worth going on and attacking people. Like, because normally it's fun for me to entertain the fans by attacking the haters. Yeah. But now it's just, like, Instagram just Instagram just erased like 60% of my shit.

So it's not even worth attacking people because you spend six hours online and four hours and we're useless because all your comments just get erased. So even if you just have a post and they leave the post up, if you have comments under the post, they'll delete your comments? They'll delete my comments. Yeah. What? Yeah.

I didn't even know they did that. Yeah. Yeah. They delete comments all the time. Like people attack me, I retaliate and then then they start to, uh, and then we go back and forth, and then, like, the whole comment section gets erased. So you spend, like, four hours on a comment thread, and then the original comment gets erased, and then before you know it, like, you just spent four hours on Instagram, and

it was all useless. What the fuck is wrong with them? It just, it just drives me nuts. I don't understand why they do it. And it just getting worse like it's not it's not getting any better so now I just got go on like once every once every day or so once every other day I just promote like a fight coming up or an instructional that's coming out and then I just I don't even bother arguing with people what about videos can you make videos like YouTube videos or or talking shit in the

Instagram video will they delete that uh depends on depend i mean if people report it they pretty much just because i have so many strikes against me they pretty much just if someone reports it they just instantly delete it and they don't even give me a chance to fight it anymore they're just like yeah fuck you you had so many violations that they uh they just erase it but um i definitely i can do some stuff uh but it's it's getting the window of what i can work with is getting smaller and smaller by the day so it's just like i it's just it is one of the weirdest problems to have to be the best in the world at something and then have someone like instagram like deleting yeah comments and posts.

I'm like perma-banned on Facebook. I get like 30 banned days, I'm okay for like two days, and then they just ban me for 30 days. They'll go back and they'll find shit from like 2015, like this goes against community standards, ban for 30 days, ban for 30 days, ban. I've been like, the last year I probably had like four active days on Facebook,

and then I'm just banned for the next 30 days every single time. It's just like, I can't even use it anymore. How do you have time to do that though with all the training? So that's what I do for fun. Like most people watch TV. I just go on Instagram and I attack people. Like I get home. I eat my food.

I'm like eating my food and I go on and I'm typing and I'm like – I tell Nat. I'm like, man, I just crushed this guy on Instagram. I can read the thread. She's like, yeah, it's going to get deleted. And then 30 minutes later, like, oh, this goes against hate speech. So it's just like I always used to do it for fun, but now it's not even fun because I just waste my time doing it. Now, obviously, the next course of progression for a guy like you would be MMA. Yeah.

Now, I know that you had talked about doing MMA in the past, but now it seems like it's actually going to happen. Yeah. So John doesn't want me to compete in MMA because he feels like jiu-jitsu is just about to break into that next level of professional sports. So for me, at least right now, I feel like I need at least someone from my team

to be able to do the things that I'm doing before I can kind of move away from jiu-jitsu into MMA. Because right now we have Gary in MMA. He's carrying our team's flag in MMA. We have me at the top of the heap in jiu-jitsu. So if Craig or Nicky Rod or my brother can start doing the things that I'm doing and they win in ATCC Absolute maybe, or they go out and they start beating and submitting all the high-level guys,

then I feel like maybe I can leave jiu-jitsu. Because if I start fighting MMA, I'm going to focus on MMA. So I feel like if one of my teammates can kind of take my place, then I can start moving into MMA and then go from there. So you look at it as a—you really do genuinely look at it as a team effort. You're not looking at it just as an individual. Most athletes are very selfish, and they just take, take, take. Whereas we have a very good team cohesion and we're always looking out for one another. And I find that that's the way that people operate best. If you look at most teams,

it's basically just a bunch of tough guys in a room who train together, who have no loyalty. And if someone offers them a better deal, they're going to go somewhere else and train there. Whereas with us, we're very loyal to John. And everything that we do is the same. My game is very similar to John's, very similar to Gary's, very similar to Craig's. We all are taught by John and we all follow the same ideas and the same philosophy of jujitsu. So the loyalty within the team is very strong, and I feel that it's always going to be a team effort. Without John, I wouldn't be as good as I am. Without Gary, I wouldn't be as good as I am.

Without Nikki, it's the collaboration of minds in the gym that really pushes you forward. So I feel like we're different in that sense, that we're not a team that recruits people. We're a team that builds athletes from almost the ground up. Like you see, a lot of the big MMA teams, or even the big Jiu-Jitsu teams like Atos, for example, they recruit guys, guys who are already successful. They recruit them, they give them a place to live, they give them a training program, and they just recruit tough guys. But if you look at a guy like Andre and you look at his black belts, they all have vastly different games.

Kynan's game is different than Andre's. Hanger's game is different than Andre's. Keenan's game is different than Andre's. And it's basically just a team of recruited guys who are a bunch of tough guys training in the same room. Whereas John, we have a team of homegrown guys who all do the same thing. Like they all have discernible games that all mimic what John teaches. Uh, and they just have, you know, slight changes and variations due to our physical attributes and, and, uh, and, uh, personalities. Now, when you say you think of it as a team, you mean, this has taken it to a completely different level because you're not willing to progress your career outside the realm of jujitsu until someone else can carry the crown.

Yes. That's next level commitment to the team philosophy. Yeah. I mean, like I said, you have a guy like John who's like the most selfless person in the world. Like he shows up every day and he gives you everything. Like, you know, I want what's best for the team even if it's not what's best for me. You know, I want what's best for the team, even if it's not what's best for me. I want what's best for John's team. I want him to go down in history as being the guy who had the absolute best team in the world.

Right now you can make the argument that, sure, Gordon's the best in the world, but the rest of the guys don't win as much as him. So I want to get the rest of the guys on my team to my level so that you don't have the argument anymore of, sure, Gordon's good, but he's the only one who really wins when it counts. I want to go into ADCC with my team, and I want to win every single division. That would be insane. You know, that's not outside the realm of possibility either.

That's what's crazy. Yeah, I mean, next year we have Gary might cut to 66 kilos. That would be insane. You know, that's not outside the realm of possibility either. That's what's crazy. Yeah. I mean, next year we have Gary might cut to 66 kilos. So if Gary's at 66, my brother will be at 77. Craig will be at 88. I'll be at 99 if they let me do the division. And then Nicky Rod will be at 99 plus. What do you mean if they let you do the division?

So for ADCC, when you win the absolute, you go to the super fight. So the super fight champion fights the winner of the absolute. Now, I won the absolute last year, so I'm only supposed to have one fight. But I have requested to do the weight division as well because you normally would just do the super fight. But I want to do the super fight, and I also want to do my weight division. So instead of having one match, I'd have five matches. No one's ever asked to do that. People have want to do my weight division. So instead of having one match, I'd have five matches. No one's ever asked to do that. People have asked to do the absolute before,

but the problem is, if I win the absolute and then I win the super fight, the super fight winner's supposed to fight the absolute winner. So you can't fight yourself. It doesn't make sense to do the super fight and the absolute, but it does make sense to do the weight division and the absolute. So if they let me do the weight division, I'll be the first person in history to ever do the weight division plus the super fight at the same time.

Wow. Now, how is Gary juggling training for MMA and jiu-jitsu as well? Dude, that guy is a machine. He basically just didn't do less jiu-jitsu to do MMA. He just added MMA on top of the jiu-jitsu sessions. So he trains MMA seven days a week, and he spars lightly seven days a week, and then he finishes that. And right now we don't have a gym set up in Puerto Rico,

so we're working around the class schedule of the gym owner. So he does MMA at 9, and then he trains for like an hour, spars, Does MMA at 9 and then he trains for like an hour, spars, then he has like a 30 minute break and then he does And then he does Jiu-Jitsu at 11 and he just adds the session on so he does MMA and Jiu-Jitsu Seven days a week and like within like two hours of each other. And when he's training MMA, he's also grappling Yeah, so he's grappling twice Yeah, most most of the MMA training is shoot boxing is standing to take down because he's already so good on the ground He needs to get he needs to work and fence wrestling and shoot boxing But he definitely definitely is some grappling when he does MMA

So he grapples and spars and then he pretty much goes right to jiu-jitsu and has to do that So I mean that's definitely not an easy thing to do in seven days a week is definitely not an easy thing to do. And how is he doing in terms of striking coaching? Like, is he, did he bring someone with him to Puerto Rico? Was he using a different person in New York? What was he doing? He uses John. John is our striking coach. Really? I'm telling you, John knows just as much about every martial art as he does jiu-jitsu. Like, John is our wrestling coach, John's our jiu-jitsu coach, John's our striking coach, John's our MMA coach. Like, John is our wrestling coach. John's our jujitsu coach. John's our striking coach. John's our MMA coach. Like, John coaches Jay Gary for every aspect of MMA, wall wrestling, everything.

Holy shit. Yeah. So he coaches him for kicking and everything? Yeah. Dude, people don't know this about John. John's first martial art was Muay Thai. John did Muay Thai for over a decade when he was growing up. And he studied all the best Muay Thai guys.

I mean, John knows a lot about striking. I mean, he coached, like I said, people don't know this about John, they think he's just a leg lock guy or just a grappler. He coaches Gary, and Gary's like, he's progressing fast as far as the striking is going. He's only been striking for a year and a half now, and

he looks comfortable out there. He does. That's shocking that he's only been doing it a year and a half. A year and a half now, and he looks comfortable out there. He does. That's shocking that he's only been doing it a year and a half. A year and a half, two years maybe. But yeah, John's his coach. John coaches everything. So does he have different training partners that train with him in the MMA aspect?

Yeah, so he has a couple guys who live there, and then he has a couple guys who he brings in who stay with him. He's a guy who has a three-bedroom apartment. So he brings in guys from New York, and then he has one or two guys who live there uh and then he has a couple guys who he brings in who stay with him he's a guy a three-bedroom apartment so he brings in guys from new york and then he has like one or two guys that live there and he spars with them every day wow so that was his that was his approach from the minute he started competing in mma because he said how many fights now six i think six yeah and this is all in one championship right all his All of his fights are over there? Yeah. Which is the biggest thing outside of the United States. They're gigantic in Asia. Oh, yeah.

They're huge. Are they back to crowds? I don't believe so. I'm not positive, but I don't believe so. When Gary does this, he's still doing it seven days a week, and he's still doing jiu-jitsu seven days a week. Correct. So the same approach that you guys have just for jujitsu training, he's doing with everything

but double. Yeah. I mean, if he's very tired, maybe he'll take off drilling sometimes and just train live in jujitsu. MMA is his main focus and jujitsu is his secondary focus, but he still does two sessions a day every single day, every day. Now, what are you guys doing for recovery? Do you do anything specific? Do you have deep tissue massage? Do you have cold ice baths?

Do you what do you I get massages sometimes just when I feel like I'm really tight mostly just use a guy to help me stretch Because I'm not disciplined enough to stretch like I should normally you saying you're not disciplined enough to do anything is fucking hilarious Like this stretch like I, like I hate stretching. A lot of people hate stretching. It's weird. In our sport, we spend all of our time doing this with concave shoulders. Yeah.

So anything where I round my shoulders, I can do perfectly. But anything where I have to bridge like this, because most people just explode, explode, I don't ever explode. Everything's always like this, contraction.

So when I have to open myself up like this, if I try to put my hands over my head and do a squat, my hands end up almost parallel to the floor. My shoulders are just the most inflexible thing. So I work with the guy who helps me stretch occasionally, and that helps me stretch occasionally. But the big thing for me that I neglected for a long time was sleep. I feel like that if I can get like six to eight hours of sleep, I can recover pretty well. I feel like for a long time I would just get like three, four hours of sleep a night, and it was okay when I was 19 years old, but now I feel like I need the extra sleep, and I feel like if I can get a decent night's sleep, I can sleep forever,

so it's easy for me to have a good night's sleep and not have to wake up in the middle of the night. But if I can get a good night's sleep, I feel like I can recover pretty well. So is the issue just going to bed on time? Yeah. I mean, I usually, we finish pretty early. So, you know, I do the MMA session with Gary either, now since I signed with One, I've been doing a lot of fence wrestling. John's been coaching me and Craig with fence wrestling because Craig's competing in SUG, and I'm competing at One in the cage. So I want to wrestle people on the fence a lot. So I usually do the MMA session with Gary, and then I do the jiu-jitsu session after that.

And then we come home. I eat food. I relax for a little bit. I lift weights. And then I'm usually in bed by like 9, 10 o'clock. And the MMA doesn't start until 9, so I sleep for 8 to 10 hours every night usually. So you generally like to lift weights at night? Because I've seen videos of you getting up in the morning and lifting weights in the morning.

I do, yeah. Sometimes I go through kind of cycles where I'm like, man, I feel really good when I get up and I lift weights early because then it's out of the way. But I've never been a morning person. I hate waking up in the mornings. So I do it for like three weeks, and then I travel to compete or something, and then the routine gets fucked up. And then I get back home, and I'm like, I'm not waking up tomorrow at 5 a.m. to lift.

So then I end up going back into a routine where I lift at like 8 p.m., and I go back and forth between when I lift. Sometimes it's before, sometimes it's after. So if you train at night, like what time is your training over? I usually train from like 8 to 9.30. Oh, and so then you'll lift weights after that? No, so I'll lift weights from like 8 to 9.30. But if we train, if we train jiu-jitsu at 11 a.m. Oh, okay. So every day. Yeah. So we're, so we're finished by two. So you have enough time to recover and eat and... Yeah. You go home, you shower. If you want to hang out at the beach for a little while, you can.

And then you eat food. When you digest it, you maybe take a nap, and then you wake up and you lift. Now, do you do anything else, like ice baths, sauna? No. No, I've never done that. I've never. I'm not opposed. Ice baths, I'm definitely opposed to.

I hate cold water. I just will pass ice baths. I'm definitely opposed to I hate cold water I just will not knock it and like anything below 80 degrees But I'm not I'm not opposed to anything else. I'm not opposed to it the saunas and stuff like that I just it's something that I've never done But there's physical advantages of using those things. I'm sure there is do you think that that would even take you like another level? Passway you're at now I could but I don't think the gains are, I think the gains are going to be marginal. I think that the big thing that's going to take me to the next level is just getting better at Jiu Jitsu. So that's what

most of my focus is on. That's why I have to hire someone to help me stretch because I'm very disciplined with Jiu Jitsu and I'm relatively disciplined with weightlifting, but with anything else, I'm just like, that's like the two things I'm good at in life is like being able to lift weights and being able to do Jiu Jitsu and everything else. I'm just like a complete child. Like I just like, I just refuse to do anything else besides what I have to do for my career. But I think it would help you. I think ice baths and sauna would help you. I know sauna would help you. I mean, Dan Gable was in here recently and just ranting and raving about what a gigantic impact sauna has had and how, you know, he recognized it from all these athletes overseas competing in the Olympics, how they utilize the sauna

and a big impact on them. Yeah, I'm definitely not opposed to saunas. I actually like sitting in saunas and hot tubs, but I just but it's something that I don't have a sauna, and I've just never done them. But if I one day have a sauna, if I buy a house again, I'll definitely think about putting a sauna in there because they're not that expensive. You get those barrel saunas. They're reasonably inexpensive in terms of the value that you get from them.

Yeah, and if it'll help, then I'm definitely, I have to do some more research, but if it'll help, I'll use it. I'll send you the research. Okay. Because I'm a sauna freak. Okay. I live by that fucking thing. I'm an old man.

I always see the Photoshop Steve photoshopping you in sauna. Yeah. He's got a lot of good stuff to work with, but I do it every day and at least five days a week, if not seven. Yeah. I know. I know. I know many people who use them who swear by them as well.

I've never done them consistently. It's got a host of benefits, but it's really good for your endurance too, believe it or not. It actually has a mild effect that's akin to like an EPO. Oh, okay. Yeah. It increases your red blood cell count. But the big thing is the heat shock proteins and the decrease in inflammatory markers. Like they can monitor all this stuff and prove it with blood work.

So I'll look more into Zana's then. Yeah, it's legit. Now in terms of striking, how much striking have you done? A minimal amount. I'm a white belt equivalent. I've done it. But the problem is when I was getting ready to initially fight MMA, it was like 2018, I started working with John. And then in early 2019, I tore my LCL,

and I came right back from that surgery, and I had to jump right into an ADCC camp. So my thing was I had to get my knee better and then I have to prepare for 2019 ADCC. And I did 2019 ADCC and then, you know, after that, I sat down with John and John's like, you know, this is a huge ADCC. I think grappling is going to start to go into a direction where it's going to start to be like a real professional sport. I think you should stick with grappling at least for a few more years before you do, before you decide to move to MMA. Like what John doesn't want is for me to leave grappling just as it explodes into the next level. Right.

So I think that, you know, after I was actually getting ready to start talking to promotions about fighting MMA. And then I hurt my knee, and then I had to do the ADCC camp. And then we did the ADCC camp, and John's like, dude, you have a super fight next year. It's going to be in Vegas. It's going to be huge. So he's like, just focus on that for now, and then see where we go after that. Now, you started competing when you tore your knee. You started competing before it was really 100%. Yeah, so I competed six months to the day after the LCL reconstruction

in my first tournament, and then I competed at ADCC seven months to the day after the reconstruction. So it definitely wasn't 100%, but it was okay enough to compete at least. What did you do for rehab? I just worked with a PT who my surgeon recommended. My big issue was that my hip on the one side locked up. So my hip on my left hip, I tore my left LCL. My left hip locked up and was like,

was losing all of its flexibility to kind of overcompensate for the LCL being torn. So a big thing was like opening up my hip and my whole left lower back was all tight. So a lot of it, like the first few months of rehab, which is him just working on flexibility and getting range of motion back. And then, um, they use, uh, for the rehab, they use that, uh, that BFR, the blood flow restriction, where they put that thing around your, around your, uh, they put a thing around my quad and it cuts off 80% of the blood flow.

And then you do very mild exercises like body weight squats or lunges and stuff. And the idea is that it stops the blood flow from getting down to your leg, and then when you take it off, the blood rushes down to the bottom of your leg, and it promotes healing. So they used that, and I used that for a few months, and it seemed to help. And then I just was like – I actually – we do a 12-week ADCC camp, and I was just miserable the whole camp. Like I started wrestling again, and my timing was off.

I was getting exhausted. I just felt terrible. And like 10 weeks into the camp, I was like, John, there's no way I'm going to be able to do this. And then like on the 11th week, I just like from a Friday to a Monday, I just came in and I just started beating the shit out of people. And I was like, wow, I think I might be able to do this. So like the whole 12-week camp, I was just miserable. And I was like, there's no way I can do this.

And then like a three-day span, I went from like just being terrible. And then all my timing started to come back. My hand fighting from standing position started to come back. And I was like, I think I might be able to do this. And then by like the time ADCC rolled around, I was like, all right, I'm in. And it ended up working out. What do you attribute that to? Like, how'd you do that? I mean, I don't know. I think it was just, I was, I was doing rehab like, like I was supposed to. And the knee itself wasn't really the issue it was just my body lagging behind for like you know you don't train for four months you're all your timing

you know your timing's all off you get you start wrestling and your hand fighting's off your day late and a dollar short in your shot so you just feel you feel like you know there's nothing physically that there's nothing that that bad physically wrong with you like my knee wasn't like you know gonna buckle or break in half or anything but i just felt like my overall timing for everything was off and then uh like i started wrestling hard for like two weeks and everything started to come back and then like you know from one day to the next almost it seemed like i was like okay i feel like everything's kind of coming back now and the last like week or two before ADCC was when like I really started to feel like I was I was who I was before I hurt the knee I think John has a real point in terms of saying that grappling is on its

way to becoming a legitimate professional sport like a much bigger professional sport I think he's right but I think it needs you I think it needs you I think it needs someone like you it needs a big personality who's also doing fucked up things like writing a triangle down on a piece of paper putting it in an envelope and handing it to the commentators before the match and then finishing someone with that. Yeah. The thing is like it needs more of

me. Like one guy can only do so much. Right. That's the issue. It's like everyone's talking about oh you have to be humble and respect and nobody wants to come out and watch an interview where the guy's like, oh, you know, I trained really hard for this fight. I'm sure he trained hard too. He's really tough.

It's going to be great. Like, everyone says that. Nobody wants to fucking listen to someone coming out. And, you know, there's 20 matches and all 20 guys say the same thing. Like, they want a guy who's coming out and like, you know, fuck this pussy. I'm going to beat the shit out of them. Like, people are like, all right, I can get behind that. So, you know, they can kind of live vicariously through you because they want to do that you know they want to

go out they want to go uh you know up to their boss tomorrow and be like you know fuck you i'm gonna beat the shit out of you you know they can kind of they can kind of get behind that because they can't do that in their in their in their in their lives um but you know there's there's always going to be a limit on how big grappling can get as a sport because grappling is a participant-based sport where most people who watch grappling either participate in grappling or they have family members who are doing it and they're watching their cousin compete. Whereas, you know, the UFC or the NBA or the NFL, like most people who watch MMA aren't showing up the next day to get punched in the face. Like people are just watching it because they want to be entertained. It's a spectator sport. So I do believe that it's going to get much bigger in the coming years, but I also believe there's going to be a cap on it. It'll never be the size of football, for example, or the UFC,

for example. Yeah, it might not be, but I think it can be bigger than people give it credit for because of the submissions, because people are so accustomed to seeing submissions in MMA and to see people pull off submissions in jujitsu. It's like a knockout in boxing. Yes. Yes. Especially when you have good commentary, which who's number one does, you know, and a lot of these commentators are really educated now because they're such fans of the sport. So they can talk people through submissions and let people know exactly what's happening and When someone's in danger and when they're free, but I think you're right in terms of we need more big personalities and more competition The fact that you're having a hard time getting matches is weird

Yeah, you know with all these big heavyweights out there. There's a lot of guys who are your size who? They're not stepping up. Yeah. And another thing you need, too, is you need a training program that pushes you towards some missions. Like nobody wants to watch two guys in 50-50 fighting to fucking scissor back and forth until someone gets an advantage. And then you come up and, you know, people want to see movement, which is exciting. Okay. Ultimately, what people are looking for is movement because if people aren't moving, there's no excitement.

They want movement and they want submissions. A submission is equivalent to a knockout. Yeah. And if you have a training program, like I said before, built around just doing the absolute minimal amount of work to win, then you're going to be boring. But if you want to take the hardest route and you say, okay, how can I fight to a submission? There has to be a lot of movement to get a submission. You got to work through various, you know, positional gains to get to a submission in most cases. Um, and you submit a guy and you're like, okay, people are like, okay, I can get behind that. Like people see an arm break, people see a guy get strangled unconscious and they're

like, wow, that was fucking, that was intense. Is John, does he have a game plan to try to elevate the status of grappling or to elevate the profile of it? So he's talked about us. He talked about this to us. I remember I had one of the most important conversations of my career when John told us that you just, you have to be exciting in one way or another. If you look at a guy like Chael Sonnen, for example, he hasn't defended the UFC title for 10 years in a row, but he was entertaining outside of the ring. So even though he didn't have the skills to beat the best guys consistently, people wanted to watch him because he was entertaining and he was different.

Where if you look at a guy like George, George wasn't really entertaining outside of the ring, but he would just go in and just beat everybody over the course of two or three generations. And he's like, if you look at notoriously who the most remembered and highest paid people, it's the people that were entertaining in the competition and outside of the competition. You look at Tyson, you look at Muhammad Ali,

you look at Conor, guys that have the skills to back up what they're saying so that they're entertaining outside before the fight. People want to watch that. He kind of goes to a press conference. Everybody wants to watch it. George goes to a press conference and everyone knows what's going to happen.

George is going to be like, oh, he's very tough. I'm excited to fight him. But Conor goes to a press conference. He's fucking throwing monster cans and shit at people. Who the fuck is that guy? People want to watch that. But, you know, on the same token, the shit talk is the easy part,

and it only takes you so far. Like, you only get so far with shit talk. So that's why you need to have the skills in order to actually be able to back up the shit talk. And John told us that we need to be exciting either on or off the mat. We need to be different. And we just need to focus on being the best in the world. He's like all the pre-fight antics and all the shit talk and all the interviews, that's the easy stuff. The hard part is being the best in the world. Like if you just focus on being the absolute best in the world and that's your primary focus, everything else comes easy.

So he sat me down when I was like 17, and he talked to us about this. And I was like, you know what, that makes sense. And then like a few years later, I was like, man, maybe I should create like this King Ryan persona. Like it's different, people can get behind it, it's entertaining, and then I ended up working out. So it was sort of a calculated effort. Yeah.

It's got to be so weird to have a guy like that as a mentor. Because you know there's only one of them out there. Yeah. And it's just like, you know on the mats, it's literally like a cheat book. Like you ask John a question about anything. You ask him about a striking question. You ask him about a grappling question. It doesn't matter. You ask him about a frisbee question, and he knows the answer. And then you have a guy who's there all day long, all year long, and he knows everything about everything. And you're just like,

wow, like, this is, this is like nothing you're ever going to find anywhere else. And he doesn't, he doesn't have, he doesn't have kids or a wife. He doesn't compete himself. So his primary focus is on just making us better. That's what he loves to do. Most coaches, they go home and they're in the camp for one of their own fights. They're focusing on themselves. They go home. They have a family to raise. That's not John. John goes home

and he watches tape from a 1956 boxing match. And he comes in the next day and teaches Gary something. You can't compete with that. Yeah, it's tough. There's no other guy like that yeah especially a guy like that who's isn't he a phd in philosophy as well yeah yeah he's a legitimate university columbia yeah he was a teacher at columbia that's imagine yeah where are you gonna get one of those that's there's one of those on earth yeah i mean it's it it's, it's tough. I mean, if, if you like, he's,

he's applied, like you have like a, like an actual genius competing against like most instructors that like, you know, a lot of the, a lot of top level coaches that are coaching jujitsu in the U S grew up in like a favela in Brazil. And there's nothing wrong with that. They moved to America, America, they became successful, that are coaching jujitsu in the US, grew up in like a favela in Brazil.

And there's nothing wrong with that. They moved to America, they became successful. But to compete against a guy like John, who's like a legitimate genius, and is teaching at Columbia University in New York, and then just applies that intelligence to the sport of jujitsu, it's just not fair in most cases. The level of intellect, it's just not fair in most cases like the the the the level of intellect is just

there's just no comparison but it's also the level of intellect and this obsessive dedication yeah to teaching people like the only thing he enjoys is knives he collects knives and jiu-jitsu and martial arts yeah he found one of my knives on my instagram he's like i love that knife yeah what are you a knife freak dude he's he He gives out knives for black belts, right? Yeah, he moves. So whenever we win a big tournament, I remember when I won 2017 ADCC, he came in with a katana that's this big

that was custom made by one of the best knife makers in Japan. And he goes, this katana is designed to cut the heads off horses in battle. And if you lined up three male human beings back to back, it would chop them in half of the torso with one swipe. And I was like, wow, that's fucking awesome. So I just have a collection of knives sitting in my room.

I have to get stands for them still. But whenever we win something big, he gives out knives. He's a knife freak. That's interesting. So he has knife makers that he hires? Commissions? He knows all the world's best knife makers. He's friends with them. He texts them. He's like, hey, can you do this?

He designs his own knives. He's crazy obsessed with knives. Well, he likes pig hunting knives, those big-ass pig stickers. Yeah, because you know he used to hunt pigs in New Zealand, right? That was like his childhood pastime. He used to go out and and used to hunt pigs with with dogs yeah that's how they do in hawaii too yeah yeah that's a that's a down home way to do it yeah yeah they do it that way here too i got invited to do one of those hunts i asked them one

time and i'm like i'm like uh i'm like john like what was your favorite like you know tv show growing up he goes we didn't have tv we We hunted hogs Okay, just tell me about that But yeah, my friend that I had a buddy in Dallas We went out with like night vision goggles and we and and we were he's like he's like you want to go hunt some hogs Sight I'm like yeah sure and we went out like nighttime and we were looking for pigs Yeah, Hennessey just invited me to do that and Tim Kennedy's always invited me to go hunt them on planes or on helicopters. That's crazy. They're all running through the field. They have this giant gun.

It's nuts. I have to eat it. I'm not going to kill them and leave them there. Apparently they're a big problem here, right? It's a giant problem. But they're still delicious. So if I'm going to go out and I'm going to gun down 10 hogs, I am-

You want to eat at least one of them. I'm going to at least eat one, and the other ones I'm either going to donate to the hungry. There's programs called Hunters for the Hungry. You could donate it, but a lot of times they just leave them there and let them rot because their idea is just eradication. They just want to eradicate them, and it's really hard to do. Yeah. It's very difficult.

There's so many, and they're pretty smart, too. They're smart as fuck. They're smarter than dogs. Yeah. It's a weird animal, man, because they were brought over here in, like, fucking 1600s or wherever it was. Whenever the European explorers came over here, they brought over pigs, and they've just run amok. Yeah. Now they're everywhere.

And, like, Texas is one of the worst places I hear from they opened up one road in Texas and the day they opened up the road like they did construction on this road Lay all the tank with the day they do the open up the road. They had 40 car accidents with pigs. Oh my god, I Mean I was like talking to my buddy in Dallas And he would like he went on like a 15 minute rant about how the pigs just destroy everything in Texas. And I was like, whoa, that's kind of sensitive for you. I didn't realize how bad it was. Oh, it's bad. I think overall, let's see, how much damage do wild pigs cause in Texas per year?

I think it's in the billions. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, it's definitely in the hundreds of millions of dollars, I know for sure. That's insane. Yeah, it's definitely in the hundreds of millions of dollars, I know for sure. Because I know ranchers who have said, like, on their personal property, it's over a million dollars of damage per year by hogs. Because say if you're growing something. That's crazy to think about.

Yeah. 52 million? That's it? That's the money? That's it? Why am I so exaggerating? Feral hogs cause more than 1.5 billion. Oh, okay.

Click on that. I mean, it's the same article. I don't know why it says it differently. Yeah, that's what I had read. I had read that it was hundreds of millions, and so it's actually 1.5 billion each year. But the most hated animals in Texas have their charms. Oh.

Well, that makes sense because there are a lot of farms here. What are their charms? They're delicious. Baby back ribs. It's one of the most ethical animals to hunt because you literally have to hunt them because they've destroyed ground nesting birds. They decimate populations of other wildlife. They destroy lots. Oh, yeah, man.

And they ruin people's farms. Like if you want food, like if you want people to grow food. You got to kill the pigs. If you're a vegan, okay, and you love corn, guess what, fuckface? You got to kill those pigs. If you don't kill those pigs, you're not going to stop them from eating all that corn. Yeah, that's crazy. And they're going to keep multiplying.

Three, four times a year they breed. Yeah. So, I think it's three. I think they have litters three times a year. And they'll have, you know, three, four babies every time. And the next thing you know, you got a swarm of pigs, just devastating crops. And you can't keep an eye on all of them. Have you driven through Texas before? I haven't. I mean, to some degree, yeah, but not as much as I should have.

It's bonkers. When you drive, you just go, this is all still Texas, right? And you just get six hours later, this is still Texas, right? 10 hours later, we're still in Texas? Like, what the fuck? And so it's just, there's so much land. And when you have millions and millions of these wild pigs, I'm going to guess, let's guess how many millions of wild pigs. Just in Texas? Yeah. I bet. Oh, that's a tough one. I bet there's 5 million. I'm reading through this. The 1.5 billion is from the Department of Agriculture, and then it does say 52 million in Texas. Does that mean that there's the rest of it is throughout the rest of the country?

Is that what that means? And then there must be somewhere there's more pigs? I mean, even if it's $50 million a year, it's an insane amount of money. That's pretty minor and competitive because this guy was telling me, I think it was $1.4 million on his property. Maybe he has a giant ranch, though. Or maybe he's a liar. I don't know. People love to exaggerate.

I certainly do. I think California is a giant problem for sure. I know they're into San Jose now. People are getting, they're having problems in San Jose where they're eating their lawn. They're pulling up their lawn in San Jose, like right in the middle of their fucking. It says there's 2 million wild pigs, excuse me, roaming Texas. That's it? Mm-hmm.

Those are 2 million pigs caused the 52 million damage and there must be 30 million pigs roaming everywhere else. I don't know. That's fairly reasonable if you think about it, right? Like each pig is causing about. Big causing about $25 worth of damage. That's not that bad. That's not too bad. Like, really? When you put it like that, maybe we don't have to kill the pigs.

Similar. Did you see this yesterday? Grand Canyon NP seeks skilled hunters to reduce bison population inside the park. They're causing damage there too, I guess. Inside the park? Yeah. This article, I just was looking at it. Those bison have grown from the bison brought 115 years ago, and it says that they're causing

a nuisance, and they're going to have a hunt this year. Oh, wow. They want to reduce the population by 200. I feel like they should capture them and just move them to other places. I think having a hunt on the park is a – that's a touchy subject because they've worked so hard to make that place, you know, a wildlife refuge. It's real weird because it's not a hunt. You're just assassinating them.

Yeah. Because I was there, and, dude, you could just get right – like, I was real careful that we did it behind a fence, and I was, like, literally ready to grab my kids and run behind a car because when they turn, if they just decide to turn, if the dude has a hard-on, he feels like you're cock-blocking, they'll just fucking come charging at you and send people flying through the air. They send themselves flying through the air.

It says they have moved up to, it says 88 of them have been moved on to tribal lands since 2019, so it's only in the last two years. Well, that's a good sign. It's a good sign that there's good growth. Those motherfuckers are so sturdy. They're so hardy. Nothing kills them other than. It's crazy how feeble a human being is

compared to the other animals. Yeah, even a guy like you. I mean, we're basically like water balloons. Like this is so, their skin is so thin. And to think about the fact that the animals now, like, compared to the dinosaurs, are just like. The hunter, whoever gets this lottery tag, do you have to take it out without motorized assistance, it says? Do you have to carry that out? Is that what that means?

Yeah, you can use horses. Okay. Yeah, you want to use horses anyway. There's terrain that you really want to use mules. Yeah, I'd say donkeys and mules. But mules are the best. That's a cross between a donkey and a horse because they're like a perfect combination, apparently,

for these backcountry hunters. They love mules because you could pack a lot of shit on them. They don't give a fuck if it's hot out or if it's cold out. They don't drink as much water. They're just like super sturdy animals. And they got useless loads. Like the only way you can make them is you have to have a donkey fuck a horse. Like you can't make a mule.

Mules can't fuck other mules. They're going to have a, applicants have to meet some certifications. Self-certify a high level of physical fitness. Have a firearm safety certification and pass a marksmanship proficiency. They should have that anyway, by the way, for hunters. They should have to pass a marksmanship proficiency. They have that in some states for getting a bow hunting license. Three to five shots inside a four-inch circle at 100 yards.

That's it? That's not enough as good, bad, average. Well, you're hunting a bison. Four-inch circle is pretty good. But that's so easy at 100 yards because you're probably using a rest. Like, all you have to do is just not flinch. And if your rifle is zeroed in, you should be able to put them all inside of, like, a couple inches. I mean, the only variation is you moving.

Like with a really good rifle, you just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, boom. Like if you just keep, like with a rifle rest, like a lead sled, which is most of the time they use a Caldwell or something like that, you're rested. You just don't flinch. But they should have that period for hunters because there's a lot of places where you don't even have to have a marksmanship. You don't have to have any kind of test, but a high level of physical fitness

implies that they want to make sure these people can carry out these animals. So either you're going to carry it out or just be able to hoist it up. Like if you're quartering a bison, do you know how much a fucking bison leg must weigh? I'm weigh guessing a lot like it's got to be hundreds of pounds if you kill that correct like and there's a photo of me when I shot a moose it's on the cover of carnivore magazine I think it is I think that's what it's called it's just

hunting Oh Peterson's hunting that's right it's called. It's just hunting? Oh, Peterson's hunting. That's right. That is not even a big moose. That was a fairly small moose and that was... People don't realize how big moose are. They're big as fuck. They're enormous. And that thing on my shoulder is probably 150 pounds. It was hard as fuck to carry. I had to hoist

it up and sling it over my shoulder. It was like I had a small dude on my shoulders. Now, a bison is probably twice as big as that. I would imagine a grown male bull bison is probably a 300

pound leg. They're fucking huge, man. You don't realize how big they are. Do you see them? They weigh up to 2,000 pounds. Yeah. What in the fuck? That's so big. But the good news is you shoot one of those, you eat that motherfucker for two years.

You know, that's two years of the best meat on planet Earth. And you can give it to a lot of families. Like if you shoot one life of one bison will sustain four or five people for two years. I mean, really. That's a lot of meat. That's a lot of fucking meat. Especially if you use it right. Like you take the bones and you make bone marrow out of the bones.

You make osso bucco out of the shanks. All the parts that people like oftentimes leave behind. I mean, you can. And then you get this fucking crazy rug. Because if you shoot them in the wintertime, you can. And then you get this fucking crazy rug. Because if you shoot them in the wintertime, you have the most amazing fur. Yeah. You know?

Like, American Indians, they were pretty goddamn smart in what they hunted. They didn't fuck around. Shoot one of those bad boys. I know. And they just. That's the thing about hunt, air quotes, hunting them in Yellowstone. Like, they're so used to just being around people. They just look at you.

All you'd have to do is just pull out a rifle and just, oh, here we go. They're not going to run. I mean, that was a problem when the settlers first started making their way across the plains. They didn't know what a rifle was. So when bisons were dropping around them, they'd be like, what the fuck is going on? They just kept eating. And then guys would shoot like 10, 12 bison in a time because they didn't budge.

They were just in this big pile. They're used to seeing people. Exactly. And they're not used to being in danger from hundreds of yards away. They're used to like, an Indian would have to come sneaking up on them with a bow or a spear. They'd have to ride at them with a horse and jab them. They'd have to

do something to get close. Pigs are different. When I went hunting pigs, if you were upwind from them, they smell you. They run away. They're hard to hunt. Yeah, yeah. If they're downwind and they catch your scent, they will fucking haul ass from hundreds of yards away. Same with bears. They smell you. They're like,

fuck this. They just haul off. They have crazy senses of smell. It's amazing. And pigs can't see shit though. If you just freeze they don't know what the fuck you are. Like if you're walking up on pigs and they just look at you, all they have to do is freeze. And they don't see you. They have terrible

vision. But they can smell really good. They smell really good and they hear really good. Yeah, we were trying to position ourselves in the right spot and we just couldn't get it and they just fucking kept moving, moving, moving. So you guys didn't get one? We didn't kill any, though. We only saw like three or four, but it was hard to

keep track of them, and then whenever we would position ourselves, they would move in the opposite direction. Yeah, you gotta go to a place that's basically infested. Yeah. There wasn't too many where we were. Yeah. It's, you know, it really varies and they move around a lot too. But, uh, have you been hunting at all before? I just hunted the

pigs the one time that was it. I've never, I didn't grow up hunting or anything like that, but I'm not, I'm not, I would love to do it. I just never have. It's a great way to get meat, man. And the meat is fantastic. What, what does your diet consist of? So I actually have a condition called gastroparesis, where your stomach doesn't push the food down to your intestines how it's supposed to. So the food basically just sits in my stomach for longer than it's supposed to. And I've had this for like three years, which is why I'm just constantly nauseous and just can't eat the amount of food that I need to. So I'm basically limited to like chicken and rice and eggs. That's all I can eat. I can't eat any red meat because it's hard to digest. I can't eat anything fried. I can't eat cheeseburgers. I can't eat anything spicy. Like there's a very

select amount of foods that I'm actually able to eat. That's crazy. And when did this start? Three years ago? Yeah. So I had a recurring staph infections and it was like, I would take oral antibiotics and then I'd be on antibiotics for a week, 10 days, two weeks, and then like four days later, staph infection, oral antibiotics, staph infection. And I just had like four or five staph infections within the course of like three to four months. And they don't know what causes gastroparesis. They don't really know too much about it. But I seem to think it was that and Ever since then it's just I wake up in the morning. I'm nauseous

I go through the whole day extremely nauseous, and then I just go to sleep nauseous. So you're nauseous right now Yeah, all the time. Really? Yeah all the time you're like Yeah, so like normally normally how it goes is like there's at least one hour of the day where I'm just like so Incapacitated for being nauseous that I have to just sit in the bathroom where I'm just like so incapacitated from being nauseous that I have to just sit in the bathroom because I'm just so nauseous I just can't deal with it. So the problem is when I eat food, like you can manage it with diet, what you eat and how often you eat. So normally what I should be doing is fasting. So my stomach is empty the whole day and then I just have a meal at nighttime, but I would just waste away if I was fasting. So I go

kind of in these waves where my stomach's okay for a few months and then it starts to, and then I just have a meal at nighttime. But I would just waste away if I was fasting. So I go kind of in these waves where my stomach's okay for a few months and then it starts to, and then it goes into a bad dip. And when I travel a lot to compete or to teach or whatever the case is, I'm usually forced to eat at restaurants. And what do restaurants do to make all the food taste better? They put grease and butter and you end up, I end up like eating for four or five days at restaurants or all this shitty food. And then I'm fucked up for like two weeks where I just can't eat anything. So that's why my weight fluctuates depending on how bad my stomach is. But I have to eat every three hours or else I can't get enough calories to maintain my size.

So I'm basically just piling food on top of food that's already in my stomach and just not getting pushed through to my intestines. And this is just to compete at the weight class that you're at yeah I just I just generally think that it's better for me to be bigger because my game isn't based on on speed or explosion It's based on negation of movement so uh you know negation movement comes with just being Positioned well having sticky grips and ice metric strength, so if I even if I get heavier and I end up slower, it's not really going to matter for my game. And people don't realize, like, I'm big, but I'm not crazy big compared to your average heavyweight in grappling. Like, Boucher shows like 6'3", 265.

Guys like him, people I'm competing against are like 250, 260, 270. When I fought Boshesha ADCC, I think he weighed in at like 263, and I was 210. So 50 pounds is 50 pounds. And I think that if I was able to get up to a weight where I was walking around at like 260 and then cutting to 240, I think I would be much better than I am right now. But the problem is I just can't get the calories because of the gastroparesis. Wow. So I know George St. Pierre has had some gastrointestinal issues as well. Yeah, he had colitis. Yeah. Is he the one who talked to you about fasting? Because I know he's a big proponent of fasting.

I talked to him about it and I've just done my own research. And I do think that fasting would help because the main thing that makes me nauseous all the time is the fact that the food is sitting in my stomach longer than it's supposed to. So if I just went through my day with an empty stomach and then ate at nighttime, it would be a lot easier for me. But the problem is I would be like 180 pounds if I did that. So I have to just wake up and every two to three hours, I have to just shove my face of food and try to get the calories in. But I actually found out that I had gastric presis when I did a gastric emptying test. And they do, they basically take eggs, and they put this radioactive dye in it. And they make you eat eggs and toast. And then in increments, it takes like a five hour long test. Every like

hour or so, they put you between this machine and it takes images of the radioactive dye and it tells you how long it takes your stomach to empty the food. And I was retaining food like way more than a normal person should be. So my stomach isn't contracting the right way to push this food through. So when I go to eat my second meal, I'm already full from the first meal. And it's always a big problem with people that have done antibiotics where there's always a rebound period where you have to take a lot of probiotics and your gut biome has to sort of reflourish. Well, that's what I thought. I was like, I mean, 2018 and I was just nauseous all the time. And I was like, ah, you know,

it'll get better. I'm young. It'll be fine. And then like six months went by and I like, at first it was so bad. I like couldn't even train. Like I would just show up and I just, I was like, couldn't do anything. And, uh, then I got an, I got an endoscopy and that was fine. And the doctor's pretty much just like, you know, you're fine. Here's some nausea medicine. So he gave me Zofran. And, uh, I never really thought much of it after that. I, you know, I tried some probiotics. Those, those didn't work. I tried some yogurts and whatever one tells you to do. Those didn't work. And, uh, then I pretty much just accepted it because John used to teach, used to teach privates to a guy who was regarded as one of the top three gastro doctors, uh, either in America or in the world. And he's like, he told him like, once the food goes in your mouth and down your throat, we

basically have no idea what's going on. We just basically take our best guess and we do some trial and error, trial and error medications. So I'm like, I'm not going to waste my time at doctors. Hopefully it just gets better. So I basically just took the, the Zofran, the nausea medication, uh, whenever I could, whenever it was unbearable to get it back to manageable. And, uh, then I just did it. I just managed it like that. But then recently, before the Roberto Jimenez match, where I called the mounted armbar, it got so bad to where two days before I was going to fly to compete, like four days before the competition, I wasn't able to eat in like five days. I could hardly eat anything. I had to go to the hospital and get an IV because I just couldn't eat any food. need any food. Um, so I went to the hospital, I got the IV, I competed in the match. And then I'm just like, you know what? I can't, I can't live like this. I got to find something that I can, I can do to manage this better. So I went back to New York. I found the doctor, a buddy of mine who actually cared about helping me. Um, and wasn't just like, yeah, you know, you're fine. And she pushed me through. He was like, you know, we're going to find the, we're going to find the

cause of this. Uh, so I went So I started going to a few different doctors. They did a few different tests for H. pylori, and then they did the gastric emptying test. And they were like, yeah, you have gastroparesis. So now they're just like, you know, try these. They have like some few medicines that they try, and you try one for a few weeks. It doesn't work, you try the next one. It doesn't work, you try the next one. So I've been on this medicine now for like four weeks. And it's helping a few weeks. If it doesn't work, you try the next one. If it doesn't work, you try the next one. So I've been on this medicine now for like four weeks.

And it's helping a little bit. It takes the edge off. But it could just be a coincidence because I could just be on that kind of up cycle that my stomach's doing okay right now. But in a few weeks, it may be bad again. So we'll see how it goes. Has anyone recommended like taking a break off of competing like a month or so where you just fast and try to eat at night and rebalance it? I actually, I tried, well, I didn't compete in like the whole first, almost the whole year of 2018 because I just couldn't even train Jiu-Jitsu.

I was just so, it just was so terrible. Now, I haven't tried fasting for a month, but I've tried fasting for a week where I just, my stomach was so bad that I just couldn't eat. And it doesn't, it doesn't seem to do much. Like I feel less nauseous because my stomach's empty. But then the second I start to eat again, it just, I just get nauseous again. So it's something that I've been dealing with for the last three years. That's incredibly infuriating, but you just do what you got to do because nobody cares that your stomach's are hurting there's no there's no like there's no cure to it they just have treatments that they

use that if if it if it works great if it doesn't then you're kind of fucked have you researched people that have had your same situation that have gotten through it and now they can eat normally yeah so uh i've done some research and just went on some forums, and pretty much what everyone says is the same thing as me. Like, I can't eat at restaurants. I can't have anything fried or greasy. I can't have any red meat. All the fun stuff. Yeah, all the stuff that you want to eat, I can't eat.

And then some people have some different experiences with different medicines. They have, like, three or four things that they try, and some people say that, you know, this one worked and this one didn't, or that one worked and this one did it. And it basically varies person to person on what, on what helps them. Fuck. So yeah, it's a, it's the hardest thing for me is just knowing that I believe that I would be better if I was heavier. I don't necessarily think that I need to be 240, 250 pounds to beat the best guys, but my goal at this point isn't focused around beating the best guys. If I was just concerned with how do I beat the next best guy, I would have had to have done half the work that I've done to get to the point

to just be better than the number one guy in the world. But my goal now is focused around how can I be the absolute best athlete that I can by the time I hit my prime. And I just believe that being a 250-pound Gordon would be better than being a 220-pound Gordon. And having to deal with the fact that I may never reach my full athletic potential because of the stomach problem is what's like the most frustrating for me and that the stomach problem was likely caused by antibiotics yeah that's when i first started having problems i just had recurring staph infections and it was just oral antibiotics oral antibiotics every single time and uh ever since then i've just been fucked up Yeah, I've had staph a couple of times.

And when I took the antibiotics, I was amazed at how much they wreck your endurance. Oh, yeah. Like, especially Bactrim. I took Bactrim a few times, and then I never took it again after that. But, like, you go to, like, lift weights or do jiu-jitsu, like, your first set on your first exercise. Like, you're 100% exhausted. Yeah. first set on your first exercise like you're a hundred percent exhausted yeah um and like i i like i'm like okay i have staff i can't do jiu-jitsu but at least i can lift weights and

it's like no you can't like you go into lift weights and you're like about to have a heart attack after your first five reps yeah it's crazy to think that all that is what's going on in your gut yeah and that you're yeah the gut biome controls so much of the body and that the body really is some sort of weird ecosystem. It's like if one thing is fucked up, it just throws everything off. Yeah. I know you got into kombucha. Did that help at all? I did.

I tried kombucha for a little bit, and it seemed to help. I actually had like two or three months where my stomach was okay. It was like probably 80 to 90% better. I had like two or three months where my stomach was okay. It was like probably 80 to 90% better. And I could eat food. And I actually went from like 220, like I got up to like 240, 245.

Like if I can eat food, I get big quickly. I just can't eat food. But I tried it for a few months and it seemed to be okay. And then it started to get bad again. I think it was probably just a coincidence because when my stomach started to get better, it was when the pandemic hit and I wasn't traveling to compete. I wasn't traveling to teach seminars or film instructionals. So I was on a routine where I was eating clean food, like just chicken and rice, plain chicken and rice and eggs at home for like two months straight. And my stomach started to

get okay. What really messes me up is when I have to travel and eat like shitty foods that's not home cooked. So I think that the kombucha helped, but it was just more of a coincidence that I was eating the food that I needed to be eating for a longer amount of time. So do you still do the kombucha or do you stop? No, I still drink the kombucha. I feel like it helps me. I feel like the main issue I have is that I get full fast and I feel like the food's sitting right here and I feel like I need to burp, but I can't to like make room for more food. So the kombucha or anything really carbonated, uh, helps me like the bubbles like help me digest it and it helps me burp and I can make room for more food. Have you thought about traveling with like someone who can cook for you? Like wherever you go? I could, but the problem is whenever I go to travel,

I'm always, I'm always put in hotels where I don't have kitchens That's that's the problem Like if you want to you know Get a kitchen in a hotel room You have to get like some crazy suite that like cost a shit ton of money What about an Airbnb or something? I could get Airbnbs that would that would make sense Um

I have to maybe talk to Flo when they book my next hotel If they can Airbnb me something But uh that's the that's like the main thing is getting off the routine and eating like shitty foods from like IHOP or like restaurants and stuff. Right, right, right. Because I feel like most, there's a lot of Airbnbs in most cities. You know, you can get a probably pretty decent house and bring everybody in there and it might be better anyway because you could, you know, bring some portable mats, lay them

out in the living room and, you know, maybe go over positions and stuff in your actual house. Everybody sleeps in the same house instead of being in a bunch of different hotel rooms, and you could cook. Yeah, that might make a lot more sense. Even yesterday, I taught a seminar, and then I finished, I did an interview, and there was only one place open. And I like the healthiest thing I could I got like eggs on toast and it shows up and it's just like loaded with butter and it's like soaking wet with grease and I'm like if I don't eat this I'm not gonna be able to go to sleep because I'm so hungry but if I eat it I'm gonna be fucked up so I eat it and I was you know you're okay you eat it a half hour later you're fine I wake I wake up this morning. I'm like, yep, my stomach's not happy. So like we get here, I'm like super nauseous,

like halfway through the podcast, I'm still super nauseous. And now it's like just starting to wear off to like where it's, I'm normal again. And I can like talk and not have to worry about it. But you're probably hungry again. I'm hungry again. And then when I eat, I get nauseous. So it's just like, it's just like, it's just so frustrating. Fuck. And so was it a series of like trial and errors that led you to chicken and rice? And yeah, so like, what would what I would find is like, I would be like on an up cycle. And my diet used to be like, first of all, I used to be able to eat an incredible amount of food,

like, you know, five, six Big Macs at the same time, like I used to be able to eat more than most people. But it used to be just terrible. Like I used to just eat fast foods all the time. So I love like a nice McDonald's cheeseburger. So my stomach would like start to get better. And I'm like, you know what? I've been feeling good these last few weeks. Let me try to have McDonald's. And then I'd eat McDonald's and I'd just be fucked up like next week and a half.

And, you know, then I kind of realized that anything that's really hard to digest or really processed is not good for me. And I would usually find that with eggs or with chicken and rice, things that digest easily, that's relatively easy for me to handle. I still can never eat as much as I used to. So I have to eat just in smaller increments. So I have like, you know, six ounces of chicken and rice here. And then, you know, two hours later, I have a little bit more than two hours later, I have a little bit more. Sometimes it's really bad. I like can't even finish a meal. I have to like eat a few spoonfuls. And then 20 minutes later, I go to eat a few more than 20 minutes later, I go to eat a few more. And it takes like three hours to eat a meal. Wow. That's crazy. What about salads?

Vegetables? Vegetables are usually okay. Yeah. Vegetables. Yeah. They're not, I usually just mix them up or Nat cooks my food. She usually just mixes them up and chops them up into little pieces with the chicken and rice. And I kind of mix it in and it's usually not bad. Have you tried like hemp protein? Have you ever done that? I haven't, no. That might be a good move because it's easy to digest.

I found it's the best for me in terms of like drinkable protein shakes. Okay. Hemp protein is the most digestible real easy it's the one that doesn't give me gas like whenever like i like whey protein but every time i do like i feel sorry for anybody who's in the car with me yeah so i'm gonna light that thing on fire it's just your body just goes what is this like how did you get all this stuff in one fucking drink yeah i know you know what i mean it's like it's not in a normal form like if you eat a piece of meat or if you eat a piece of chicken like your body's going oh i know what this is you drink a thick ass whey protein shake your body's like

what is happening here yeah it's like you don't put enough you don't put enough water in it's like mud right like you put like a little bit too much and you're like eating yogurt yeah that's how i like it too i like it thick but uh to me, is the easiest one of all. Pea protein's pretty good, too. That's pretty easy to digest. But hemp protein seems to be the one that gives me the least problems. And it's one of the only ones that I could eat and then legitimately train an hour later.

Because a lot of times if I eat a good meal, I can pull it off an hour later, but I still feel it. You're not happy about it. Right. I still feel it moving around in later, but you know, I still feel it. You're not happy about it. Right. I still feel it moving around in there. And I'm like, asshole, you should have waited. And that's one of the biggest things for me too. It's like, it takes me so long to digest a meal. So I have to try to eat every couple of hours, but you have two training sessions a day and a lifting session. So you can't eat right before them because then you're nauseous and you haven't digested it. And it takes you longer to digest the food. So you're tryingous and you haven't digested it and it takes you longer to digest the food so you're trying to schedule your you're trying to schedule a day your day around your nausea and what you can

eat and build it into your training sessions like if i just had to eat food all day it's easy but you can't i can't eat a full meal like nikki rod could eat like two steaks and like two like 24 round steaks and then next thing you know five minutes later he's like wrestling as hard as he can like i can't do that like if i have like a lollipop and i have to train five minutes later i'm like oh i just can't do this um so it's like trying to trying to manage and trying to fit as much as many calories i can into a day and having to train three times a day is is difficult what about fruit fruit is usually okay i can do fruit i can do fruits and vegetables the main things i have to stay away from is like red meat steaks cheeseburgers anything greasy or fried like

fried foods are the worst for me anything fried just it just fucks me up for like what do you eat like pre-training like say if you're gonna train in an hour and a half so normally we train in the in the morning so i'll wake up and i'll have a light breakfast, like three or four eggs and like two pieces of toast. That's usually just plain scrambled eggs and toast. And then between the MMA and the jujitsu, I'll have like maybe a protein shake and like a granola bar or something, or I'll have like a little thing of chicken and rice, something that's easy to digest. And then that holds me over. And then I focus on most of my eating

after the Jiu-Jitsu session where I have the rest of the night to eat and I try to stuff my face from then until I go to sleep. That's crazy. I'm hoping, this is my hope, that someone's going to listen to this that has a solution and there's someone out there that just you haven't been in contact with

and they're going to reach out to you and they go, I think I'm going to fix this. Yeah, I've been posting and stuff on my Instagram and people have been helping. But obviously, this is a much larger platform. The medicine that I have now, it's like four weeks in and seems to be taking the edge off a little bit. Whenever I eat terrible food, it still just it fucks me up. Does the medicine fuck with you at all? Does it do anything bad?

No, it's actually it's a it's a medicine that originally they used, they tested as an antidepressant, like Viagra was supposed to be for blood pressure medicine, but then they just found that it was better for a dick pill. So they used this, they started testing it for antidepressants. I still think they use it for antidepressants, but they also use it in like cancer and AIDS patients who can't eat, they're so nauseous. They use it. It's very good at decreasing nausea and increasing appetite. So one of the side effects is, you know, you want to eat more and you gain weight. What about weed? Weed is actually an interesting thing. Everyone says, smoke some weed and, you know, it'll relax you and you'll be able to eat more. It's the exact opposite for me the second i start to get high i just instantly get twice as nauseous wow i don't know

what it is but like the second is the second either i eat an edible or i try to smoke something i haven't i haven't smoked in like three years because every time i would get high i would just instantly be twice as nauseous crazy what a weird predicament. Yeah. Somebody, whoever you are out there, master of the gastro intestinal tract, reach out to Gordon Ryan. Let's fix this. It's frustrating, but at the end of the day, no one cares what problems you have,

so you just work through it and manage it. It's definitely something that, it's been three years now, and I'm just managing it pretty well. I can kind of eat my food around. I can plan my meals and plan my day around it, but it's still something that you have to deal with every day, and it's annoying. Well, it's just one more credit to you that you were able to reach these insane heights in competition

while being so compromised. Yeah. I mean, everyone has their problems, but this is definitely something that's day-to-day is very, very frustrating. So you're on the same training regimen as Gary then. So you're doing MMA training in the morning, and then you're doing jiu-jitsu right afterwards. Yeah, and then I lift weights at night. So this thing with one FC, like what is it? Do they have you set up for grappling matches?

So the way my contract works is I'm exclusive for MMA and not exclusive for grappling. So if I want to fight MMA, I can't fight in any other organization. Um, and I'm not obligated to fight, uh, MMA in my contract. My, my contract is just for grappling matches, but if I choose to fight MMA, it has to be with one, but I'm not obligated to go out and do any MMA fights. So right now my plan is, my focus is the ADCC Super Fight 2022. And then I want to use the 1FC deal to rebrand myself as a fence wrestler. Right now I'm the best open mat grappler,

but I want to be able to put experienced MMA guys on the fence, put them down, and finish them on the fence. Now, one FC with its resources, if they had exclusive grappling matches, maybe they could find you competition. Yeah, so I think what they want to do, because they don't just have MMA. They have every martial art where they have the belts in each martial art.

But I think what their ultimate goal is, is they want to make a jiu-jitsu belt and they want to have divisions for jiu-jitsu, like in MMA. Like you win the title, you win a belt. So it's going to be interesting to see what their approach is going to be. Because what I think they thought was going to happen was, you know, oh, we'll just sign him and we'll get him to fight guys like Boucher, guys like Andre Govao, or, you know, these top-level jiu-jitsu guys. But then I think that what they're going to realize pretty soon is that it's going to be incredibly hard to get a jiu-jitsu guy to fight me. And even harder to get a guy to fly to Singapore and, you know, fly across the world to compete against me. Because the guy just won't compete against me um because the guys just won't compete against me and now it's on tv now they're doing it on tnt yeah regular people in

america are gonna get it as well are gonna are gonna watch it yeah um but i it's gonna be interesting now because they're gonna start to realize that the jiu-jitsu guys just won't fight me and then who else am i going to compete against I'm going to do a grappling match against an MMA fighter. Especially in these Asian countries, most people are known for their striking. Grappling isn't at the level in most of these Asian countries that it is in the U.S. So what are they going to do? Put me against an Asian MMA fighter in a grappling match? What are they going to do, put me against an Asian MMA fighter in a grappling match? It's going to be tough to find someone who is really competitive in a grappling match in a cage with me for them because the Jiu-Jitsu guys just won't do it.

Well, I know that some people have priced themselves out. They've said, yeah, I'll have a fight with you, but I want a million dollars. Yeah, that's Andre. So the funny thing about that is I'm pretty sure there's an interview of Andre saying, I would fight my grandmother for $40,000. And then he's just like, no, I won't fight Gordon for less than a million, which is amazing because every one of his ADCC fights prior to this, the ADCC purse is $10,000 to lose, $40,000 to win. So it's like you're looking for what a however many X increase to go from $40,000 to a million dollars. It's not like $40,000 to $100,000, like $40,000 to a million dollars. It's like the whole ADCC event isn't even going to generate a million dollars in revenue. How did this get started, this beef between the two of you guys?

Because for people who don't know, there was an event here a few weeks weeks ago and he came up to you and what did he say to you uh so the whole thing originally started when you know i was petitioning for matches against the best level against the top level guys in like 2016 when i first got my black belt and uh you know i was like i want to compete against andre or something along those lines And his wife was like, well, win the ADCC Absolute, and then you'll have your chance to compete against Andre. So I go in. I lose the Absolute 2017 to Felipe Pena. And then I go out, and I win double gold, and I win the Absolute in 2019. So now Andre had originally said that he was retiring after his fight with Felipe Pena for 2019 ADCC.

But then I win the absolute, so it kind of sparked everyone's interest. Everyone wants to see this match now. So then I didn't talk shit to Andre. I didn't do anything. I was, like, super nice after. I was like, listen, if Andre wants to compete against me, I'd be more than happy to compete against him. He's a legend. He's done a lot

for the sport. But if Andre chooses to retire, like he said he was going to, then that's fine with me too. He said he was going to retire and it's not like he's ducking the match and now he's just going to suddenly retire after he wins. He said before the match, this is my last match. I'm retiring.

And then he like kind of passive-aggressively would start posting like videos of him winning adcc with captions like i'm the real king or you know just like passive-aggressively nudging me so i'm like okay like you know we can start to do this so then we started going back and forth online and you know he there must have been a turning point where he started taking what I was saying personally. Because, you know, I knew that in the beginning. He knew it was just kind of to build the fight and to hype the fight. But then I think it really started to get to him.

So after the last match where Craig submitted his student, Ronaldo, we went up to shake their hands in the corner after. And John shook Andre's hand. And I went to go shake their hands, and Ronaldo wouldn't shake my hand, and Andre flipped me off. So I was like, okay, now this is fine. I just started laughing, and I walked it off. And then we go backstage, and I go to walk to do an interview, and Andre's waiting for me, like past the curtains, in the backstage area. And I don't think he realized the camera was there, but I saw the cameras there and I was like

This is kind of Jamie go find the video because there's a video of this I was like this is kind of out of character for Andre to be like talking shit to me when nobody's around because nobody was There and it was just like one obscure camera way in the back And he started calling me a bitch and a pussy and I just I just laughed I was like you know what this is this is what it is I think what he was thinking what he was he was gonna come up and punk me in person and they look Gordon's a pussy he only talks shit online so he called me a bitch and a pussy there it is give me some volume to it from the beginning Do it from the beginning. He's like, why are you running?

Why are you running? He's like, why are you running? Why are you running? And I turned around. He pushes me. And I was like, okay, well, we're going to fight. Let's start off with a smack. You ready? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Say something. Yeah. Yeah. Up right here. Yeah, yeah. What? What? Say something. Please. Please. So you smack him in the face twice. He pushed you.

He called you a pussy. He pushed you. You smacked him in the face twice. And then it's weird. He's kind of just following you. Yeah, so I was going to do my interview. So I was like, listen. Look at this person grab the camera.

She bolted over there. He looks like he's limping. You notice that? I think he was just really shook from the smack. And the only person whose stock grew more than mine was John Mannerhurst. This fucking guy just walked in like a stone cold killer. Look at him. It's so confusing because now he's saying I want to talk to you like a man.

Why do you want to do that? You always talk shit. You should show respect. After he called you a pussy and then you smacked him. I think he was rattled. He didn't expect you to just haul off and smack him in the face and then do it again. I mean, reality hits quick. If you walk up to someone, call them a pussy, and push them, that's pretty much as far as you can go before someone call them a pussy and push them that's like pretty much

as far as you can go before you get into a fight so I'm like okay there's gonna be a fight let me start off with a smack and then I hit him and I realized that he wasn't retaliating and I was like okay this guy doesn't want to fight so then I went to go walk away a second time and he started

following me and I was like okay maybe he changed his mind and wants to fight again so I smacked him again and he just backed up and I just like okay He clearly doesn't want to fight So I'm just gonna walk away go do my interview and then he kept walking towards me And then he started to get more bold when he was when everyone was around So I was like well we can we can fight right now like we can doesn't doesn't make a difference to me And then he just he clearly wasn't interested in fighting and i think what he thought was going to happen because the atos guys are always like you know gordon always always always talk shit online but then he's nice in person which sure i am uh you

know but i'm not like a bitch like if you walk up to me and you start pushing me like we're gonna get into a fight like you're you're talking shit online because it's part of your strategy for marketing yourself yeah i mean i i want to i want to make money i want it's fun i want yeah it's fun for me i want to get paid as much as i can i want the other guys to get paid as much as they can um and what i what i do when i talk shit is i really don't even talk shit i just i just talk about facts like i just i post things that are just they're just statistics like when i talk shit about dylan and i say like hey like this guy's 18 and 16 is a black belt like that's not talking shit that's just saying. When I talk shit about Dylan and I say, hey, this guy's 18 and 16 and has a black belt, that's not talking shit. That's just saying how terrible his record is as a black belt.

People get upset because I talk about the numbers that I have and the numbers that these guys have, and nobody wants to hear that, and they just get upset about it. So most of what I do, unless someone attacks me personally, is just talking about how everybody sucks and I'm the the best you hit him with your right hand that's the hand that's been busted a bunch of times too right yeah so this one I broke this one three times most recent one was a week before ADCC I had a crazy so this ADCC was like the worst for me because I'm a seven months off the LCL surgery I

had food poisoning the day before so I I was, like, all fucked up. And a week before the tournament, I lived in New York, and I had Super 73s, the little electric bikes, and I used to ride those to training. And it was, like, late September, so it was getting kind of cold, and I'm like, this is the last time I'm going to use these bikes before I put them away for the winter. And I was going to take them to the gym, back home, to the shop to get serviced, and then I was going to not use them. That was the last day of the year I was going to use them.

Coincidentally, on the way there, Nat's bike gets a flat tire. And I'm like, okay, let's take it to the bike shop. So I'm carrying this thing and my lower back is getting really sore so it's like four blocks away I have to carry this bike to the shop so I'm like fuck this I'm like let me just put it on my shoulders so I pick the bike up like by the handlebars and by the by the back uh the back railing and I gotta put it on my on my on my back and I didn't realize that it was still on so as I went to throw it on my back. And I didn't realize that it was still on. So as I went to throw it on my back, my arm hit the throttle.

And it sucked my hand in between the fender and the tire and just spun it like 25 miles an hour on my hand. And it just destroyed... My hand was like swollen like a baseball mitt for the tournament. And I tore some ligaments in my wrist. I actually still see it swollen. And then I broke

one of the bones and I tore a few ligaments. I showed up like all bandaged for ADCC and everyone's like, what the fuck happened? I'm like, I don't want to talk about it. It was a bike accident. So that's what did it to your hand. Yeah. So you've broken it three times? Three times. Since then? No, no, no. Not since then. Total. So two times

before that and then that. Yeah. Fuck. So do you have full use of it? Yeah. The only time I feel like it's not as strong as my left wrist is when I do workouts where I have like a barbell or any kind of bar and I have weight on it and I have to go do curls like this. I feel like it's not

as strong holding weight like this. But grappling it's fine. Day to day it's fine and it feels just as strong as I need it to be to do anything in Jiu Jitsu. But it must be hard to get gloves on Gloves and watches yeah, I just slide over the big scar tissue Wow and what are the doctors saying about it? It's fine now I got an x-ray and actually didn't even get it checked out before ADCC because it's just like I'm just gonna show up and hope

For the best but I got an x-ray and an MRI and they're like, you know, it's fine. It's it's all healed now So it's just insane that you competed with a broken hand. I mean, the worst part was I hurt it, and then I didn't really train until ADCC. So it was kind of resting. But then I had to compete at ADCC. I had eight matches. And then a week after that, I had to compete against Paul Horace. So I got fucked up from competing at ADCC,

and I had to try to compete against Paul Horace the week after that. And then after that, it got, like, really bad, and I took, like, a few months off, and it healed. Other than that and the LCL, have you had any other, like, significant injuries from jiu-jitsu? I had just small things. I've had a—I've always had, like, some neck problems. If my neck gets, like, snapped hard in the wrong way,

it gets sore for a few days or a few weeks, depending on how bad it is. You ever use Iron Neck? I haven't used Iron Neck. Really? I haven't. Oh, my God. I'm getting one for you.

Okay. Right away. Those and saunas, I'll definitely look into. I just gave one to Gabe Tuttle from 10th Planet. I fucking love that goddamn thing. For grappling, there's no better exercise for your neck. You've seen it, right? Yeah. I'll definitely try that.

It's okay. Most of the time, it hurts. It hurts to some degree, pretty much just walking around day to day. You want to see Braulio steam his neck? This is what I want to avoid with you, and this is what I sent to Gabe as well. Because he broke his neck. Braulio has two fake discs in his neck.

And Aljamain Sterling now has a fake disc in his neck. And Chris Weidman has a fake disc in his neck too. Yeah. And I believe Rick Story has a couple of them as well. So Braulio's had two discs replaced. Yeah. It's not quite that bad yet, but it's definitely getting there. It's a fucking number one thing for grapplers is the neck and the back.

It's like those are the ones that when you fuck them up, you can't really fix them the way they can fix like an LCL. And it's not even most of the time it's wrestling. It's like when I'm wrestling and guys are heavy on the head, that's what fatigues it. And other than that, I just had a grade two MCL tear when I was like 16. But I've been pretty lucky as far as catastrophic injuries go. Just the one LCL was the big one.

What was that weird match that you had with Pat Downey? So I had a... You had like a dual match, like one jiu-jitsu, one... So what I proposed was to do an ADCC rule-style takedown match. Because an ADCC-style rules takedown match is wrestling, but it's not wrestling in a traditional sense. There's submissions involved, and the scoring for ADCC style rules takedown match is wrestling, but it's not wrestling in a traditional sense. There's submissions involved, and the scoring for ADCC, in order to score points by either taking someone down or taking their back, is completely different than any kind of wrestling

scoring. So yes, he has the advantage in the standing position, he can take me down, but the scrimmage to the first point actually starts when you hit the ground. So what I proposed was we do an ADCC takedown match where you have an advantage that you're a better wrestler, but I have an advantage that I know what the rules are, I know how to score under ADCC. Explain to people ADCC's Abu Dhabi Combat Club

and the way they have it set up is for the first, how many minutes you don't score any points? So for the regular matches, it's five and five. It's five minutes no points and then five minutes, no points, and then five minutes, points. And unfortunately, the idea behind that was they were going to encourage people to go after submissions. Yes. But unfortunately, what happens is people stall

for five minutes, and then the last five minutes try to score points. Yes. Yeah. So... In some cases. In some cases, yes. And then you have the finals matches, which are ten minutes, no points, ten minutes with points, and then two possible 10-minute overtimes. So you have possible 40 minutes of wrestling in the finals of ADCC. So the pace is much different.

The stances are much different. And the criteria for scoring is vastly different. And he's like, no, I don't want to do that. I just want to do one match, which is no time limit, submission only, jiu-jitsu, and one match, which is a freestyle wrestling match. And I'm like, well, we can do that, but, I mean, it's not going to be, like, exciting because you're clearly going to beat me in the wrestling match, and I'm clearly going to beat you in the jiu-jitsu match.

So I was like, how can I make this more exciting? So my goal was to— Explain who Pat Downey is. So Pat Downey is an Olympic-level guy from the USA. He's a wrestler, and he's just a guy from the USA. He just competed at the Olympic trials. He lost, but he's a legitimate guy who's beaten legitimate guys, and he's won, and he's operating at a high level in wrestling.

And he wants to start fighting MMA, and he wants to start dabbling in jiu-jitsu, but he's known for his wrestling, and he's primarily a wrestler. So he's like, I want to do one wrestling match and one jiu-jitsu match. And I'm like, okay, we can do that. So I didn't want to just go out and submit him because that wouldn't prove anything.

What I wanted to prove was that under an ADCC rule set, I would be able to out, what we call it is scrimmage wrestling, where you scrimmage for the first point. Whoever gets the first point or submission wins. What I wanted to prove was that he wouldn't be able to score on me under an

ADCC rule set, and that I would eventually tire him out, and I would be able to score on him and take him down multiple times. And we just got to the tipping point of when he was starting to get exhausted somewhere about 20 minutes in. And I took him down twice. And then I locked in a power half Nelson, which isn't a submission.

It's very common in wrestling. And he tapped to the power half. And I just fucking lost my mind because I was like just on the cusp of like starting to take him down and embarrass him. And he just basically gave up and quit like in the middle of the match. So I was like just furious about that because I went out to prove something and I wasn't able to because he just he just Stopped in the middle of the match and then we did a freestyle wrestling match and he like teched me

With he like rolled me through like a bunch of times and he teched me in like 20 seconds because in tech means 11 points In a row yeah, he just love it. Yeah He scored 11 points in like 20 seconds because he got behind me, took me down, and then I didn't belly out. I was like just trying to like do what I would do in jiu-jitsu, which is get on top. So he's just rolling me through, rolling me through, rolling me through, and I'm like, oh, he's scoring this whole time. And then before you know it, the match is over. So he did one freestyle match and one jiu-jitsu submission only match. And, you know, obviously he won the wrestling and I won the jiu-jitsu match.

But I didn't win the jiu-jitsu match how I wanted to. I wanted to take him down a bunch of times and then submit him. Yeah. Yeah, I watched that. It was weird. Yeah. The way he was. What would have made more sense is a match, a rule set like I had with Bo Nickel,

where it was you could do jiu-jitsu, but you weren't allowed to pull guard. So I had to wrestle him until one of us got a takedown, and I wasn't allowed to sit to guard, and I wasn't allowed to do leg locks. So you've got a little bit of jiu-jitsu, you've got a little bit of wrestling, where he has the advantage standing, and I have the advantage on the ground. Yeah, that is definitely more interesting. Maybe with something like 1FC having you over there, they could entice some elite grapplers in other disciplines like wrestling or maybe judo or something like that. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely an option. And I think that wrestlers are always out to prove that wrestling is the best. But I do think there's something to be said for competing under ADCC rules.

Because if you think about it, if you're ultimately looking to transition to MMA, the scoring criteria for ADCC is the most like grappling in MMA. If you take someone down in a normal jiu-jitsu match, there's pretty much an unspoken rule where the bottom guy plays guard and the top guy tries to pass. But in MMA, if a guy gets taken down, what does he try to do? He tries to stand up.

So then your whole thing is you have to hold him down to actually score a takedown. Or if he turns his back, you have to take his back. It's the same thing in ADCC. You have to get held down for three seconds. So what everyone does in ADCC is they don't just sit and accept the takedown. They try to pop back up to their feet.

So it's very like MMA. There's just not punches, but there's submissions. And guys are trying to heist up and get away from you. You have to be able to hold them down or take their back. So I mean, if you're looking to prepare for an MMA career, scrimmage wrestling under ADCC rules makes a lot of sense because it's very similar to what you do in MMA. And there are a lot of guys that are considering transitioning from wrestling into MMA because it's really one of the only viable professional outlets. Like I know Flo Grappling has put on some professional matches for grapplers.

I know Jordan Burrows is making a living just doing grappling competitions, but it's not like MMA. It's not as prevalent. Yeah, of course. And it's very different. In freestyle wrestling, if you gramby and expose your back, you get scored on. In MMA, you can gramby, you can do all these things, you can do submissions. So wrestling under an ADCC rule set, to have a wrestler who practices that kind of MMA wrestling, it's much different than just a traditional, you know, freestyle or collegiate wrestling. Yeah. What about gi competition? I know that you were doing something the other day where you were talking about a gi sponsorship and you were asking if somebody was willing to do something with you

with a gi. Are you thinking about competing in the gi? I'm not going to compete in the gi, but I'm going to teach in the gi, and I just basically wanted a sponsor to sponsor me to wear their gis during what I'm teaching. For me, I'm not opposed to competing in the gi, but the thing about the gi is it's just not as fun for me to train in the Yi as it is to train Nogi. I find it's much more enjoyable for me to train Nogi than it is in the Yi. So I feel like if I don't enjoy doing it, why am I going to do it in the first place? Like I'm already so good Nogi. I feel like I'm, you know, the best in the world, debatably the best ever. Why would I take

time away from that legacy to pursue something that I'm not even really particularly interested in? And honestly, that's dying in America. Like in the next 10 years, the Gi is pretty much going to be phased out as far as competitions in America. It's going to be like a novelty where they have like some competitions here and there. But no Gi, as far as numbers support, no Gi is the way of the future as far as professional grappling goes. Gi is the way of the future as far as grappling, professional grappling goes.

Well, it translates to MMA. Everybody understands the grappling in MMA. The same grappling applies to jiu-jitsu with no Gi. And you see people with the Gi and they're doing all this crazy shit where they're pulling the collar around the back of the head. Nobody understands that.

And matches end up boring where people just have grips. Nobody moves. And the scoring is strange. It's hard to watch. Even as a fan of Jiu-Jitsu, it's hard to watch some of the matches. But it is. Even Jean-Jacques said that to me.

It was like, you know, done it forever. He's like, these guys, you know, like a lot of them, that's what they do. They play that kind of game where they stall out. But that might be a place where you can get competition. Oh, if I competed in the Gi, I would definitely have a lot of competition. But that's the argument nobody understands is everyone's like, oh, he can never be the best unless he competes in the Gi. Well, that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to be the greatest of all.

Hodger's the greatest of all time. I'm trying to be the best no-gi submission grappler of all time. I'm not interested in doing both. And everyone's like, well, the only reason why you're good at no-gi is because you train all the time no-gi. And I'm like, yeah doing both and everyone's like well The only reason why you're good at no gi is because you train all the time no gi and I'm likely yeah That's the point that's that's the point of specializing in one domain So you can be better than the rest of the guys who don't do that and it's pretty fucking dumb argument and and the best is the argument now is You are only good no gi because you spend all of your time training nogi.

But what did everyone tell us coming through the ranks? If you want to be good at nogi, you've got to train the gi. Where did that argument go? Where did that argument go? That argument's gone. If you want to be good at wrestling, you don't train judo. If you want to be good at judo, you don't train wrestling. If you want to be good at nogi, train nogi jiu-jitsu.

So specializing in nogi jiu-jitsu, yes, of course I'm going to be better than the rest of the guys because I specialize in this. That's the whole point. That's why I'm doing it. Yeah, Eddie Bravo was always furious with that argument that if you want to be better at no-gi, you have to train the gi. He's like, that doesn't make any sense. They're saying this because they're good at the gi.

He was like, they're only saying this because they're good at the gi and they don't want to give up the gi because they give Up the gi they lose whatever 40% of their game. Yeah, and if you look at like the old ADCC's it was basically just an Unspoken rule where it was dominated primarily by Brazilians They would they would train the gi they would show up and they would take off their gi and they would just hope for the best But then you have a guy like Dean Lister who comes in who's a specialist who only really trains no-gi who comes in and starts heel-hooking people, and you're like, oh, shit, this is different than what we're doing. We have to either adapt or we're going to lose.

And, I mean, people have done a pretty poor job overall at adapting, to be honest. Yeah, that's one of the other things I was going to get to. Has any other team sort of looked at the system that you guys have put together and adopted something similar or quasi similar I mean you have You have some guys who try to emulate what we do with leg locks You have some guys who try to emulate what we do with back attacks, but it's a very rudimentary who try to emulate what we do with back attacks. But it's a very rudimentary version of what we're doing.

They copy just a general outline of what we're trying to do. It's like I talked about before. It's nothing specific. Everyone just looks at, okay, these guys are doing leg locks and they're great at attacking the back, or they're great at body lock guard passing. So they start to play around with it. But they don't see the nuances that make the difference between hitting it on the best guys in the world and having it completely fail on the best guys in the world. They just look at the general outline, and they try to copy it the best they can, and they fiddle around with the position, and they hope for the best.

But no one's really even doing a good job of not even just copying us, but no one at all is going beyond what we're doing. Like what John does, he looks at the best guys in the world, and he says, okay, this is a great move. How can I make it better, and how can I go beyond what they're doing? What everyone's just trying to do is just a shitty version of what we're doing. They're not trying to look at us and be like, okay, this is good what they're doing, but how can I make it even better than what we're doing? But Craig Jones was the only guy that before he was training with you guys was looking at what you were doing and figured out a way to successfully emulate a lot of it. Yeah, I mean, Craig was very successful before he started training with us. I remember Craig may be one of the dumbest people I know because he lived in beautiful, sunny and beachy Australia.

And he moved to this shithole that is New York to just take a train or a car through the Lincoln Tunnel every day. And he would come to that basement and train with us. And when he first got here, we do a lot of positional rounds. So he wasn't used to doing that. So he just moved to this miserable city to just get beat up every single day by all the guys in the room. And I'm like, Craig, I'm like,

why would you make a move to New York? Like, why would anyone move to New York City? And he's like, I just want to get better at Jiu-Jitsu. I'm like, okay, you got to respect that. And now he's far better than he was. But he was already doing some of the stuff that we were doing before he started training with us. And then he came to train with us, and he just instantly picked up all the other things that we were doing. So he was one of the smarter guys who, you know, he fully, he's like, these guys are doing something different.

I want to fully envelop myself in what they're doing, and I want to be a part of that. myself in what they're doing and I want to be a part of that and he's had a lot more success than he's had a lot more success now than he did when he was uh when he wasn't with us so have you always hated New York City oh yeah oh yeah it's it's it's awful so I'm originally from Central Jersey I grew up in Monroe Township and then my parents got divorced and I was driving an hour and a half like a thousand miles a, to get to the city with Gary. A thousand miles a week. Yeah. It was far. Um, and, uh, so my, my parents got divorced and then the house got sold. So I'm like, let me move to New York. So I, I was like, kinda, I was against it at first, but you know, I got convinced to,

to move to New York and I was like, let me give it a try. So I was in New York for two years, and I just absolutely hated it. I just could not stand the city. And for me, you pay all the New York City prices, but you don't get to enjoy any of what New York is. I never got to go to Sightsee. I never got to go. I never went out partying or to the clubs. Like that's, you know, New York is famous for the nightlife.

I get to wake up at 6 a.m. and go to train the next day. Like I'm not going out and partying. So I'm paying all the New York City taxes. I'm paying all the New York City prices. I'm dealing with all the crazy homeless people on the subway. And I'm not getting to enjoy any of the good parts of New York. So I hated New York from day one. And then I actually ended up moving back to North Caldwell, New Jersey.

I bought a house in New Jersey. And that was when I was convinced that John was never going to leave New York. So I was like, let me just buy a house. I'll be here for the next 10 years of my career. And then like eight months later, he's like, all right, we're moving out of New York. And I'm like, great, let me just put my house up for sale that I just bought. So New York was – I've never jived of New York. And I'm like, great, let me just put my house up for sale that I just bought. So New York was, I've never, I've never jived with New York. You know, it's something that's okay to visit here and there, but I just, I never liked the big city. I never liked that

everyone was always so, you know, pissy and aggressive. I never liked being verbally and physically attacked by homeless people on subways, which I think is pretty normal for anyone to not want to be, you know, pay 50% tax and not, you know, not go out of your house and have a homeless guy shooting on your sidewalk. I think it's a pretty normal thing to request. I think it's reasonable. Yeah.

And so John, his response was to the way New York City was treating the pandemic. Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, you basically have a city that comes out and they're like, you guys cannot train. It was crazy when the lockdown first happened because we were still training and we were driving to New York City and there was just nobody there. and we would drive into New York City, and there was just nobody there. Like to drive into New York City and just see zero people besides the homeless people on the streets was just like – it was like almost surreal. Like you walk into Times Square, and there's just nobody there.

Like it was like a ghost town in New York. Everyone was afraid to leave their houses. And, you know, we just – we were like, yeah, we're just going to keep training because what else are we going to do? So they're like, you guys can't train. You got to shut down the gym. And by the way, we're raising taxes and everything's going to cost more money because now we need to make up for the lost money that we have in taxes because we shut down all the businesses. So it was just like every business was getting shut down. They kept making more and more rules.

They kept raising prices on everything. And it's like, why am I going to stay here if I can't even legally go to train jujitsu and I'm just paying all these absurd prices for no reason? It just doesn't make sense. And so John came up with the idea to move to Puerto Rico? Like whose idea was it? No, I came up with the idea to move to Puerto Rico because, so the biggest thing for us was that we weren't sure how COVID was going to affect, was going to affect opening up a school. So originally what we planned was to move to Puerto Rico as kind of a semi-permanent location because we had a friend in Puerto Rico who had a private mat space like in his house that we could train at if we needed to. So we, we were afraid of we were looking at Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida, but we were afraid to move to Texas because there

were so many uncertainties at the time. We didn't want to move to Texas, spend $200,000 opening up a school and having the government be like, you guys can't run this school, shut it down. And then we're like, what the fuck do we do? So we kind of used Puerto Rico as an intermediary step where we moved there. And worst case scenario, we would still have a place to train and mats to train on at a friend's place so that the competition guys could train and get ready for competition if they needed to. And now we're working on opening up a school there, and it's a little bit more permanent for now. And so where are you guys training now? When I see you training, it looks like you're in a gym.

Yeah, so we're in Combat 360, a buddy of ours, Juan, that we know through one of our mutual friends. He has a school down there in Guaynabo. And we're currently training in his gym. The problem is it's pretty much only big enough for just the competitors. So everyone's asking, oh, when can we come train? When can we come train? Well, whenever we get our school opened is when you guys can come train. can we come train when we come train well whenever you get the school opened is when you guys can come train uh because right now it's a relatively small mat space and you put 15 people on the mat

and it's crowded so right now we're just working at a friend's gym we're working on opening up a gym for us and then once the gym gets open it'll be a lot a lot easier what led you to puerto rican puerto rico versus new york or versus rather Texas or Florida? For us, it was just originally the COVID restrictions. Like I said, there were so many uncertainties as far as moving like, you know, was Biden going to win or not? If he got into office, what was he going to do with the COVID restrictions? And we didn't want to move to Texas where – And have them shut everything down. And have them shut everything down.

Florida was pretty open at the time, right? Florida, Florida was starting to open, but it was, I think it was still closed at that. They still had masks going on. And, you know, we, we, we didn't know if Biden got elected, would governors listen to whatever he was trying to say, whatever he was trying to make them do. So we, we didn't really know. We didn't have any close friends in Texas or Florida that had a private space for us to train, provided a school wasn't going to be an option.

But in Puerto Rico, we had friends there that just said, okay, we can lay mats down in my house, my garage, or wherever the case is, and we have enough mat space for 20 people to train on if we need, if a school isn't an option anywhere in the country. So the fact that we had a surefire place to train, even if gyms were getting shut down, was the reason why we moved there. So how many months went by before competition was held? So everything shut down in March.

When did you guys start competing again? I think it was probably, I'm not sure. I think it was probably five months. I'm not sure. I think it was probably five months. I mean, they were talking about doing it, and they couldn't find venues to allow anyone to, even with no crowds, like to put 50 people in a room, you have all the production team and the referees and the athletes in the corners. It was hard for them to find a venue to allow them to do that.

And then the first events that started popping back up, I'm pretty sure were the flow grappling events. And the Who's Number One came. And then I think it's like somewhere five or six months into the lockdown, they started doing no spectator shows. And then it kind of just kicked off from there. And where do you anticipate? So the regulations, the way they have it set up

in Puerto Rico, you can kind of do whatever you want, right? Yes, they're still kind of, I mean, we have our buddy who we train with is very good. He teaches like, he teaches all the police. He's like the instructor for the police there. So they kind of leave him alone. But they're sticklers for masks. You need to have masks everywhere. They actually have a law where you need to wear a mask outside. And if you don't have a mask outside, you can get fined $5,000. What?

$10,000. Outside? $10,000 for the second offense. You need to have masks on the beach, provided you're not swimming. Oh, my God. I mean, nobody listens to these rules, and they're not enforced, but those are the actual rules that are in place right now. So they're pretty bad as far as masks go, as far as what their actual rules are,

but no one enforces them. Everyone pretty much just does what they want. You still have to wear masks inside all buildings and stuff, but other than that, it's not really that big of an issue. What does it feel like living in Puerto Rico? I mean, it's awesome. It's definitely a huge change of pace. If you go anywhere in the country and you're coming from New York,

everything seems slow. But going to an island, going to Puerto Rico, it's like 10 times worse. Like everyone's just – it's just like you feel like it's almost a joke. Like everyone just moves so slowly there. Everyone shows up late. It's just like you got like it's almost a joke. Like everyone just moves so slowly there. Everyone shows up late. It's just like you got to get used to it. If you don't accept that this is the way that things work, you're just going to drive yourself crazy coming from a place like New York. I was talking to Craig about when he bought a car and the brakes didn't work.

Oh, yeah. So we've had like four people buy cars from there, and they've all just fallen apart in the first three days. So if there's one thing I can recommend to anyone, if you're moving to Puerto Rico, buy a car new or have it shipped in from the mainland. Don't buy it from one of the locals there. And do what you did and get something that's Japanese. Yeah. Yeah. I bought that little Miata and I shipped my truck, my Tacoma there. So I've had no problems yet so far. Well, that's the thing is those cars are pretty bulletproof. Yeah. So I have like this little Miata that's a convertible with a six speed in it. And I just like beat the shit out of it. And it just, I mean, I only have a thousand miles on it, but it's, it's going to be, it's going to be rock solid. Those are the most underrated little sports cars in the world

because they're so small and they're so fun to drive. They're so light. Yeah. Everyone, everyone knocks on them, but until you drive one, you can't really talk shit about them. They're by no means fast, but it feels like you're going fast no matter what speed you're going because it's so tiny. It feels like a go-kart. It has just enough power

to where if you pop the clutch at 8,000 RPM, you can get the tires to break loose. And it's perfectly balanced 50-50 with the weight in the back. So if you pop the clutch and you get the tire spinning and you want to, like, do a little drift, like, you can hold the drift easily without any experience because the car's

giving you everything that it has as far as power go. So you can't, like, overshoot it and spin around. It's, like, just impossible to do. And it's perfectly balanced, so you can, like, hold it in drift, so you can do burnouts with it. It's, like, the best car ever for Porter. Have you ever seen that company called Flying Miata?

I have, yeah. They're ridiculous. Yeah. I wonder what those are like to drive because it's got to upset the balance of the car a bit, no? Yeah. They have all kinds of crazy stuff. They put Hellcat engines in the front of them. They have like a 2,000-pound car with 700 horsepower.

Really? Yeah. But the fucking engine must be so much heavier than the what is it? A four cylinder in the Miata? I think it's a four cylinder. I think it's a 2.5 liter. 2 or 2.5 liter I believe I'm not positive. But it's got like

181 horsepower. But it's actually pretty quick. It's got like a 5.7 0 to 60. Really? Yeah and it actually is faster than that because you have to shift into third gear in order to actually hit 60. So if second gear carries you through 60 miles an hour, it would be like a mid-5,

like a 5.4, something like that. But you have to shift into third to hit 60. So it's quick, but it's not, it's definitely not fast. Like, you're not going to get in the car and be like, oh my god, this car's fast. But it's fun to drive. The engine, though, in comparison to, like, I wonder what those flying Miatas are like to drive drive because it's got to fuck with it a little bit it's got to make it like an old way heavier in the front yeah yeah it has to be right unless they do something

to the rear like is there a way to do that where they could beef up the the rear end i'm not sure but i mean if you drop a huge engine engine in the front of it i mean it's going to be heavier in the front yeah but i mean a miata 500 horsepower, 700 horsepower is a Miata with 700 horsepower. It's just so ridiculous. It's going to be fun no matter what. Well, it seems like maybe a turbocharged 6, you could kind of get it closer. Get away with it, yeah. Yeah, whereas...

But people are dropping huge V8s into them. I would like to see what... I want to see what that looks like, because they must do something to the tires as well, right? Do they flare the wheel wells and put larger tires? They put a lot of wide body kits in them. They put the extra fender. They either bolt on or weld the fender so that you can get wider tires in the back. A friend of mine had one of those Honda, what were they called?

The S2000s? Yeah. And that was an interesting little car, too. Super underrated. That's what everyone told me to get and told me if I was a real man, I should have got an S2000 and not a Miata. And I'm like, yeah, but does the S2000 have Apple CarPlay? Oh, good call.

I'm like, the Miata is like, it's just modern enough. It has Apple CarPlay and has like all the things that you need but it still gives you like this raw driving experience of like of like an older like 80s or 90s car where it's just like you feel like it's just you in the road and there's not much else to be distracted by a mechanical feeling yeah yeah that's the thing like it's hard to get a mechanical feeling with these uh newer cars like one of my favorite cars that I have is a 2005 BMW M3. The old M3s are amazing. It's not nearly the fastest car that I have, but it's so mechanical.

Like, everything about it, like, you feel everything. When you're shifting the gears and you're, you know, you're driving it, like, you feel when the tires are about to break, you can really feel it. Yeah. There's nothing better for me than the old muscle car feel. I have the CTS-V that I bought for my dad, the 2017 CTS-V. And just like the fact

that if you just stomp on the gas you're not sure whether or not you're going to die. Matt Farah has one. Look at that fucking thing. 520 horsepower in like a 2,000 pound car. It's insane. That is so crazy. That's crazy. Give me some juice on this. Let me see what happens when he takes off. Go from the beginning when he takes off. God, listen to it.

It's a crate engine that GM sells. We're not going to go on the super... I got to see what that's like. That's going to be like me in three weeks. We're not going to go on the super million mile an hour road. We're going to make sure that the balance is maintained. Gearbox, you said T56... Well, he's a good guy to listen to because Matt really understands cars. The whole drivetrain is built for...

Let's put the windows up so we can get audio. The whole drivetrain is built for this, right? It sounds amazing. listen to because Matt really understands cars okay so they adjusted a lot of shit with those cars they over built it yeah so it's gonna 520 horsepower LS3. Wow. That's the goal. This is fantastic. The shifter even feels nice. That's wild. Okay.

I wonder how much one of those costs to do that kind of a swap. Yeah. I mean, it's not crazy expensive, but it's not cheap. Yeah. But, I mean, it's worth it. That's going to be like me in three weeks. Yeah, well, if it's 2,000 pounds, even if you add a couple hundred, with that kind of power, that must be preposterous. They make, like, supercharger and turbo kits that get it up to, like, 250,

and you have, like, a sub-5, 0-60. Like, it's... They get pretty quick. Yeah. Well, I'm have like a sub-5, 0, 60. Like it's – they get pretty quick. Yeah. Well, I'm imagining that's probably quite a bit quicker than that. Yeah, I was going to bring in a muscle car, but – I know it's raining today. Yeah, that's the one thing about this place versus California is it rains all the time.

But it's also why it's so fucking pretty. Yeah. Everything's so green. Like when I go back to California, I'm like, what is wrong with you people? Why are you all still here? The TRX is a good replacement. Ever since they announced that, I've been in love with that thing. And I don't want to trade my truck because I just love driving manuals. My truck's a six speed. But the TRX is definitely a truck that I, if I ever moved to a place like Texas Texas I definitely want one of those big trucks

yeah that's a ridiculous car yeah and then when Hennessey takes it and makes it even more ridiculous like Dodge is amazing they're just putting Hellcat engines in everything let's put it in the Durango let's put it in the Jeep let's put it in the truck they haven't put it in a Wrangler yet like a Jeep Wrangler

they put the SRT one in the Wrangler it's like 4 Jeep Wrangler. No, but they put the SRT one in the Wrangler. It's like 470, but there's some guys that'll do that. They do Hellcat conversions for two-door Wranglers. Yeah. Like, that's insane. It is insane, but I just love the fact that people are doing that. I'm like you.

I love all cars. I'm a fan of cars, but I'm a giant fan of the old muscle cars. Yeah. Like, I was talking about just the fact with the CTS-V, of cars, but I'm a giant fan of the old muscle cars. I was talking about just the fact with the CTS-V, where if you get into a nice Mercedes or a BMW or an all-wheel drive Audi and you stomp on the gas,

it's fun, but you know what's going to happen. You're going straight line, it's going to be fast. With the Cadillac, you hit the gas and you're like, at any moment I could die. That's what I like. You have 700 horsepower rear-wheel drive, and you're like at any moment I could die. And like that's what I like. Like you have like 700 horsepower rear wheel drive. And it's like it sounds like this bomb's gone off behind you. I have like a Corsa exhaust on it.

And the tires are spinning. The car's moving everywhere. And you're just like, wow, this is what I signed up for. It's just so funny that it's a Cadillac. If anybody from like the 1960s could see a Cadillac today, they'd be like, what the fuck happened? Did you see the new CT5 Blackwing? No. That they're coming out with?

So they're coming out with the new CT5 Blackwing and it comes with 670 horsepower. It's like GM's last shebang with like a big supercharged V8, I think. And it comes in a 10-speed auto or a 6-speed manual. Really? Yeah. And a 6-speed manual in a luxury American muscle car is fucking awesome.

How many doors is it? It's a four-door. Wow. You can get that in a manual. That's nuts. 2022, that will be their last shebang because they are going to move to electric. Everything's moving to electric. Yeah.

It's definitely the future, but there's nothing like a fucking- Look at that fucking thing. Like an old V8. That is crazy that they're doing that in a manual. I wonder how many they're going to sell. Well, if they're going to sell any of them, they're going to sell them here in America. The only other company that is hanging in there with manuals other than American cars is Porsche. Yeah.

They're the only ones. Those motherfuckers are still going strong with manual transmissions. I mean, it's 668 horsepower. That's bonkers. Top speed, it's 668 horsepower. That's bonkers. Top speed, over 200 miles an hour. And you know the 10-speed's way faster, but a 6-speed is a 6-speed. It's just more fun to drive. It's way more enjoyable for me.

Yeah, most of my cars are manual transmission. It's just way more fun. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. People want convenience, but I always feel like those are people that don't truly appreciate cars. Yeah. Like you just want to get in a car and go to work at point A to point B.

Yeah. I get it. You want a nice car and you want to be able to do that in a nice car. I get it. Yeah. But when you're doing, like when you get in a car to drive it, it's different. Yeah. You feel like you're in a fucking movie.

Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. I love it. I'm a giant fan. Have you taken your car to a track ever? I haven't. No. I haven't either. It's, it's awesome. I love it. I'm a giant fan. Have you, um, taken your car to a track ever? I haven't. No, I don't either. It's all my one time I did back when I was doing fear factor, but it's, it's all my, it's all my wishlist. I, uh, I actually have a buddy in Puerto

Rico who's going to, you can rent the track for like 200 bucks a day or something in Puerto Rico. And I'm going to, when I get back, actually, like I, like one of the first days I get back, I'm going to take the Miata of the first days I get back, I'm going to take the Miata to a track. And I'm going to try to see if I can fuck around a little bit there with it. But it's definitely something that I want to do. I just have never done it. What do you think you're going to be doing when you're done with all this competing? When I finish competing, I don't really know. When I finish competing, and when I finish my competitive career, I want to compete until I'm 35 to 40. That's what my goal is now, as long as my body and my stomach are okay. But maybe I'm going to be, I'm definitely gonna have enough money where

I don't need to have need to open up a school to support myself but maybe i'm just gonna be bored maybe i just want to run a school to you know help other people and and uh and just because i love jiu-jitsu so much i just want to teach um or maybe i'm just gonna be like you know what i've done jiu-jitsu for the last 20 years fuck this i don't want to have anything to do with it and i just like buy a house in the middle of the woods somewhere and not have to deal with anybody um so like i could go either way um right now with the current, the current series of events is happening in America, I feel like I'm just going to want to buy a house like in the middle of the woods in Montana, that like you can't get to unless you helicopter in and just never like

not be surrounded by anybody. But uh, it's, it's tough to say. Don't you think you'd get bored? Yeah, I would. But I think one of the things I also want to do when I retire, it's like on my bucket list, is I want to have like a rooftop tent on a truck, and I want to travel around teaching seminars to all 50 states and see which states I want to buy houses in, like see which states are the most enjoyable. So that's one of the things I want to do when I retire.

That's not a bad move. Yeah, the retirement thing. How much money can you make doing jiu-jitsu right now? How much money can I make or how much money can most people make? Can you make? A couple million dollars a year. Really? Is that what you're doing right now?

Yeah. Wow. And is that seminars as well as? It's mostly instructionals. Most of my money, well well actually most of my money comes from a series of investments that I have. Um, but as far as just jujitsu, um, most of the money I make comes from instructionals, probably, probably about 90% of my income in the sport of jujitsu comes from, comes from instructionals. Instructionals make far more than sponsors,

Instructionals make far more than sponsors, competitions, and seminars all put together. Really? So your competitions, in a sense, are like an advertisement other than your career, you know, in defining your legacy. They're an advertisement for your instructionals. Yeah. So, like, for example, I'm going to be releasing a series called Attacking from top pins with bj fanatics that's my next instructional coming out um so like my last couple matches i've hit attacks from top pins like i hit the key more from a top half guard i hit the mounted armbar so i basically just use my matches now to market whatever instructional i'm going to be coming out with soon and these

instructionals though here's the big question how come people aren't seeing these instructionals, though, here's the big question. How come people aren't seeing these instructionals and then utilizing your system, and then why don't we see a bunch of clones of the Donner Death Squad out there? You see them in the up-and-coming generations. The guys who are already established are too arrogant to watch them. And it's just like I talk about. Most people get to a certain level. Usually it's black belt. And then they coast with that level of technique,

and they don't really get any better. So if you go to, like, ADCC Worlds, you see your typical 2010 jiu-jitsu. If you go to ADCC Trials with all the up-and-coming guys, you see pretty much just a mimic of what our game is. Everyone uses ashi-gramis into leg locks. People are trapping arms from the back. So you see a lot of the younger generation and the new school guys trying to do what we do, but the old school guys, the guys who I'm competing against currently won't even bother.

They're too lazy to watch an 11-hour instructional on back attacks. And they just were like, you know what, fuck this guy. I'm going to do the same shit I've been doing for the last 25 years. How long do you think they can last doing that, though? It seems like with the new guys coming up, you do see these more complex games. You do see these more diverse games. Well, you see a general pattern in jiu-jitsu. You see a guy get to a certain level. He wins a few competitions, or a few big competitions.

Then he coasts on the technique he has, and the only progression that he makes from the age of 25, where he wins his first ADCC, to the age of 35, is everyone just takes more steroids. So they just get bigger and stronger, and then they just coast on the same technique they have. And then by the time they're 35 to 40, they peak physically. And then after that, they kind of degenerate, and then that's the end of their career. So, I mean, what we're focused on is progression, is rapid progression over a small amount of time. So that by the time I'm, like, myself at 35, I wouldn't even be competitive with myself now. Like, whereas most guys, a 25-year-old competitor versus a 35-year-old competitor,

they're relatively the same in technique, but the 35-year-old guy has just 10 more years of juice, and he's just a little bit bigger and stronger. So he's going to win the match. Yeah, that is a problem with jiu-jitsu today, is that whatever drug testing they do is basically an intelligence test. Yeah, and there's none.

I mean, if you look at actual jiu-jitsu, in most competitions, there's not even a rule where you can't use steroids. Like, it's legal. And then if they do have testing, it's like the UFC. The IBJJF tests for, they don't do random testing.

They do one test on the day of the event for every other winner, for every other division winner. So they test a one-way class, and then they skip one-way class, and they test another way class. And no one says you can't can't use steroids they just say you can't get caught using steroids it's a big difference um you know do i think that

everyone who passed suicide tests are natural absolutely not um so you know the the the competitions who do test in jujitsu don't say you don't have to use steroids they just say you don't have to get you can't be caught using steroids. It will penalize you. And there's only one competition that I know of that tests, which is the IBJJF Worlds. And then nobody else tests for it. I used to think naively that USADA had basically cleaned up the sport. And then I watched this video from this guy.

Derek's YouTube shows more plates, more dates. Yeah. You know that guy? Yeah. He did a thing on me. he yeah he did a he did a he did a natty or not yeah what did he conclude uh well actually he did a thing about me and Lachlan Giles because we were arguing about about him him being on uh on steroids and um I forget I forget what he actually concluded because he was it was more about it was like a natty or not but it was also like talking about the argument between me and Lachlan and, you know, building – gaining mass in a sport where you're basically just doing cardio all day. So it was like a natty or not, but it was mixed with some other arguments that I had with some guy online. But his argument, well, his video about Paulo Costa and John Jones and all these guys that have either failed tests or had issues in the past was very enlightening because I didn't know how much wiggle room there was.

There's a lot. Yeah. There's a lot. Yeah. And, like, if you think about it, like, USADA has a certain amount of resources and WADA has a certain amount of resources. But beating drug tests, like, for the Olympics is, like, a multibillion-dollar industry. And you have countries behind beating drug tests. Like, you want to—like, your country wants to win the Olympics like you have the country of Germany the country of the US country of Russia dedicating scientists and billions of dollars to getting these guys to pass the drug test to win the Olympics like the the

industry for for beating drug tests has a lot more money going through it than the industry for for drug testing itself mmm yeah well if you've seen the documentary Icarus you, have you seen that? It's amazing. It's a documentary that they basically got very lucky. And the guy Brian Fogle, who's the director of the documentary and he created it, he was going to do a bike race clean and then do it the next year juiced and document it and see how much of an effect

it actually has on cycling. So he does it clean and then he hires this guy who's the head of the Russian anti-doping agency. Well, when he does that, it is right at the same time where they get busted for the Sochi Olympics. So what they did with the Sochi Olympics is the Russian team had this really elaborate scam where they put a hole in the wall and they were passing clean urine through and taking the dirty urine. So they had all the urine stored in this one room

and they had figured this out by doing a micro analysis of the glass that the urine was in. They found scratches that indicated that they figured out a way to get past this very sophisticated locking mechanism that was previously thought to be impossible to open up. And so these guys had done that and they had swapped urine out and then they got busted and now this guy, Gregory Rechenkov had to escape Russia

in fucking the cover of night and come over to America they did this now he's under witness protection program right now. They want to kill him. They've targeted his family back in Russia, they took all their funds away, they took their house away.

It's crazy. And he went into detail about how the Russian athletes, all of them, across the board were juiced. He said the only people that weren't juiced for the figure skaters because they didn't find any Benefit in juicing them and with the their fine motor skills Deteriorated and they also found the females look too manly. Yeah the um It's uh, it's always funny to see Guys that are competing at like 35 years old

That are like twice as jacked and twice as cut as they were when they were 25 years old like that's not supposed to happen what about ul romero yeah i mean he's he's the freak of all freaks i mean he's twice as he's twice as big and twice as cut as he was when he was like an olympic level athlete yeah like it's insane um and it's the same thing like uh like lance armstrong look at that they wanted to give the prize to the next guy who wasn't doping. It was like a 76 person or something. Something crazy. It was way down the line that it didn't even make sense to give it to the next guy. So it's really interesting how everyone thinks that if you can pass a USADA test that you're 100% clean, and I just don't

believe that's the case at all. Yeah. Yoel Romero just got pulled from his fight with Rumble Johnson. I saw that. They said that he failed some sort of pre-fight medical, but I wonder what that would be about. Have they released that yet? What do you think is going to happen? Do you think that you're going to continue with John Donahue's plan and go into just jujitsujitsu from now on and just dominate jiu-jitsu? Or do you think there'll be a time where you're going to be tempted enough to compete in MMA? If you had a guess.

It's too early to tell yet. You know, I've always wanted to fight MMA. I think it's going to be a big deciding factor is going to be how 2022 ADCC goes. You know, how big is the sport going to be how 2022 ADCC goes. How big is the sport going to be after that event? Who is going to win the absolute? Where are they holding that? Vegas.

Really? Thomas and Mac. No shit. Yeah. What month? September, late September. It's in the Thomas and Mac arena. They're going to be huge. They're getting

I think they want to get billboards on the strip and put a whole ADCC poster on there. It's going to be a big event. I would say I'm definitely going to be there, but September's elk hunting season. September's tough to give up September. You can make two days.

I don't know if I can. That's a terrible time of year. That's when they're screaming. That's when the elk are screaming. What the fuck are you doing, ADCC, you non-elk hunting motherfuckers? It's always September. Always late September. Oh, that's literally prime elk hunting time.

Shit! So, yeah, that's gonna be a big one. Dude. And there's a good chance, like my brother or Craig, there's a good chance that one of my teammates wins the absolute. So what am I going to do? Am I going to fight him? Am I going to relinquish the title and move to MMA?

Am I going to relinquish the super fight title and move back to the division and do the absolute? You know, it's kind of hard to tell. Have you ever gotten into a situation like that where you had to compete against a teammate? I had to compete against Gary Tonin, the last ADCC. That's right. Everybody thinks that match was fake, but that was like the most heartbreaking.

That's like the thing that annoys me the most is everyone thinks it was fake, but it was like 100% real, and it was like the most heartbreaking thing I've ever had to do because Gary is one of my first coaches. Like, Gary was a black belt when I was a blue belt, and he was like one of the first guys who really helped me, you know, move up through the ranks. And he introduced me to John and, you know, he was a big part of my, of my career, my early career, and even my career now. Um, and that was the first year that they allowed two people to be in the same division and, uh, two people from the same team to be in the

absolute. Uh, but the way the ADCC does it is because there used to be so many fake fights in the quarter, in the semifinals or the finals, that they make all the teammates fight second round now. So you can't fake a fight and then go to the finals being fresh, or you can't fake a fight in the finals. So they make all the teammates fight second round. So I had to go out and compete against Gary second round, and everyone thinks it was fake because it looks like he just gave me his back. But Gary knew that his one chance of like definitively beating me was to leg lock me. So he tried to back step into my legs.

I knew it was coming. And then I just exposed his back. I took his back and I had his back like the first minute in. And I ended up finishing him. And everyone thinks it was fake. But I'm like, I did this to everybody else in tournament like I said I submit everybody else like up until this point Why do you guys think it was fake? Well, they think it's fake cuz so many of them were doing it fake. Yeah, of course

Yeah, that that is that's always been the case with when jiu-jitsu teams meet up. I mean they would make agreements yeah, yeah, and now they have like What they do is they have like they have like three-way agreements where like not even guys on different teams will make agreements to, you know, to beat one guy on the other side of the bracket they don't like. Like who has the best chance of beating the guy we don't like? Or if it's this guy, then we'll do two fake matches and this guy will go to the finals. Really?

Like it's crazy. Yeah. So they'll do two fake matches so the guy's fresh when he faces that other guy? Yeah. Ugh. Why is, how did jiu-jitsu fall short in this way? Like, what is, what went wrong? It's so crazy because, first of all, everyone talks about, you know, you need to follow the roots of jiu-jitsu.

And they talk about, you know, being humble and having respect. It's like, you know where Brazilian jiu-jitsu and talk they talk about you know being humble and having respect it's like you know where brazilian jiu-jitsu started from right it started from like the gracies like fucking going in and beating the shit out of karate instructors or taking over their schools like what are you guys dojo storming yeah like what are you guys talking about um and you know it's just it's a group of guys and a crowd of people fighting over peanuts. So there's every promoter for the most part in jujitsu, every high level athlete for the most part in jujitsu are just scumbags because they're all fighting over a small amount of money and they'll do anything they can to get that small amount of money. So it's like you can to get that small amount of money.

So it's like you have like 10,000 people fighting over a thousand dollars and everybody wants a thousand dollars to do whatever they can to get, to get there. Um, so there's a lot of scumbaggery that happens, you know, both in competitions and both, you know, in negotiations on the mat, off the mat. So it's just a, it's, it's the complete opposite of what most people tell you jujitsu is like, you know, you don't have to be hardworking and be humble and respect and all this shit. It's bullshit, most of it. So it's just funny to watch coming up to the ranks and seeing all the crazy shit that happens when people are either competing or negotiating to do competitions.

It's just crazy. It is funny when you go back and look at the old school jiu-jitsu matches or just old school fights like when hicks and gracie fought hugo duarte on the beach yeah smacked him in the face and started the fight and then they're fighting on the sand yeah and then like the camera cuts out next thing you know he's on top of them like that was like that was like a normal day for those guys yeah and now like uh now like i smack andre after he like assaults me and everyone's like andre smack Andre after he, like, assaults me and everyone's like,

Andre should sue him. I'm like, what? Like, where, where did we, like, how did we get from here to where we are now? It's just insane. Well, there's a video

of him pushing you first. Yeah. If you could go back in time and compete against any jiu-jitsu player, would it be Hickson? No. I mean, the best Gracie

by far is Hodger. Hodger. And not even competing against him. I've never trained with Hodger. Hodger is by far the most accomplished Gracie as far as jiu-jitsu goes. And I think that Hodger is also by far the best technically as far as not even just the Gracies, but just competitors in general. Like Hodger went out and Hodger finished people, like consistently went out and he just, like, he mauled people

like I'm mauling people today. Like he just went out, you know he's going to cross-collar, strangle you from mount, he goes out, he passes your guard, he mounts you, and he finishes you. Like it's just, it looked like a guy who was just far ahead of his time competing against guys from that era. So Hodger is someone that I really respect and I would really love to, It looked like a guy who was just far ahead of his time competing against guys from that era. Hodger is someone that I really respect, and I would really love to— he's retired now, but I'd love to train with him one day at least.

Yeah, is he still training on a regular basis? A lot of these guys, they get to in their later years, and their bodies are so fucked up, it's hard for them to actually train hard. Yeah, most of the—I don't know about Hodger, but most of the competitors, even the active competitors are just fighters. Like they just, they do a camp. Whereas like, you know, if you're a real martial artist, like you train full time.

Like most of the guys that compete at the highest levels train less than some of the hobbyists I know. Like they do like four or six week camps, then they do an ADCC, and they take two months where they just don't train at all. Like not training for two months is like the most insane thing ever.

Like this is your job. Like they don't treat it like a job. They treat it like a hobby where they want to make money doing it, but they don't actually put in the work to be able to achieve the things that they want. And maybe they win a tournament here, maybe they win an ADCC there,

but in order to make money doing jiu-jitsu, there's a lot more to it than just going out and winning a few tournaments. You have to market yourself well, you have to be present on social media, you have to be able to teach people, you have to speak well. There's a lot more than just winning competitions. I couldn't agree more. And I think that your drive and your accomplishments and the excellence that you're pursuing, it doesn't just apply to jiu-jitsu. I think there's a lot of people that don't even plan on doing jiu-jitsu that are going to get a lot out of this conversation. Because I think to be a person like you, you have to be a person like you. There's no half-stepping.

There's no part-time savages. It's all or nothing. It's all or nothing. And look what it's accomplished for you. I-time it's like all or nothing it's all or nothing and look what it's accomplished for you i mean it's it's it's pretty extraordinary and uh you've also set a pace and um a workload that it's so daunting there's a lot of people that are not going to even try yeah yeah i mean it's it's it's it's hard to keep. And that's one of the things I pride myself on the most is that I work harder and I work smarter than all the rest of the guys. And it shows. And I just feel like I'm at a level now where I'm getting better faster than I ever was. And I feel like the more time that goes on, it's just going to get worse and worse for everybody. Why are you getting better faster?

goes on, it's just going to get worse and worse for everybody. Why are you getting better faster? Because the more you know about the sport, the more you can understand the mechanics and the biomechanics, the easier it is to go back and fix mistakes from day to day. Like when I was a brown belt, for example, if I had a problem from mount, I would either have to sit in the position and try to figure it out. I'd be there for 30 minutes or an hour trying to figure out what the best options are, or I would go to John and I would ask him the question. But now I understand how everything works. So if I run into an issue, I can just think about, okay, what are the rational ideas I can play with here that will get me to a solution that works? So the more you know about jujitsu, the easier it is to go back and kind of reverse

engineer what issues you have, and you can solve problems by yourself. So that you're an independent problem solver rather than someone who just has to go and ask somebody else a question and you get an answer from the guy. So you can innovate stuff and you can create stuff on your own and you can go beyond. Like John's whole thing is he wants to go beyond what he teaches us. He doesn't want to create a bunch of robots who just try to copy what he says. So he gives us an idea, and then we run with that idea, and we innovate on our own,

and we end up creating something completely different, completely new from what he was originally showing us. Well, whatever you do, whether it's MMA or jiu-jitsu, I'm going to watch. I appreciate you. I love that there's people like you out there. I think it's just cool as fuck. I love people that are all in it's hard to

find authentic people now it is very hard and when do you have a scheduled match coming up yeah so I actually have a match on this upcoming upcoming who's number one on flow grappling it's May 28th they haven't released the name yet so I'm not gonna to release it here. But I do have a match coming up, and then I have a match in July, which is verbally agreed upon against an ADCC champion. So that should be fun. So I have a few matches coming up.

They're trying to find, they're trying to, you know, gather people to compete against me. But I have a few things coming up, and I'm excited. I hope the guys actually sign the contracts and show up, and we can have a match. But I've got a few things coming up, and then the big one's ADCC next year, obviously. Beautiful.

Well, I can't wait for all of them. Thanks, brother. I appreciate you very much, man. Thank you. Thanks for coming in here. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Thank you.