The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #110 with Craig Jones & Alex Volkanovski

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

Joe is joined by top ranked jiu jitsu grappler Craig Jones & UFC Feather Champion Alex Volkanovski.

the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day and we're up with the baddest motherfucker in a 145 pound division on the planet earth Alexander the Great Volkanovski and by default the number one grappler on the planet because he poisoned his teammate. Yeah, but you're breaking secrets there. Oh, it's a lie.

It's not true. Craig Jones, you bad motherfucker. What were you about to say? I'm just glad to be present right now because last time we had our podcast, I don't even remember it. How do you not remember it? Well, Vegas got me.

I remember coming in. I'm like, yeah, man. And I was in a weird bubble. Maybe nerves and that included in it. I don't know what it was, but I literally don't even remember it because I had big nights over there. Oh, okay. Yeah, big, big nights. And then I barely remember it.

So I'm like, man, what did I say? I literally thought the boys are in the green room and they're like, oh, no, you talked about this. I go, I talked about that? I honestly couldn't remember nothing. Welcome to my life. Yes. I leave here and people are mad at me. And I're like, oh, no, you talked about this. I go, I talked about that? Like, I honestly couldn't remember nothing. Welcome to my life. Yes. I leave here and people are mad at me. And I'm like, what the fuck did I say? And they're like, you said that thing about the guy.

And I'm like, did I? I don't remember. I don't know what the fuck I said. Yeah. If you're in a good conversation, it just goes down the hole. That's it. Speaking of good conversations, you were on the Great and Powerful Alex Jones show yesterday. Yes.

What the fuck was that like? A great experience. Alex is just as funny in real life as he is on the show. He's hilarious. I could listen to that guy talk all day. Yeah, he easily could be a stand-up comedian. Easily. I think I'm actually trying to convince him.

I believe he's going to come to the grappling show this Friday night, and I'm going to persuade him to jump in the corner. So I'm going to have Alex Jones and John Danaher. Jay, what do you reckon? You're going to jump in there too, maybe? I just might have to separate John from Alex. I don't know if those personalities will work so well. Imagine that as a podcast. I don't. There's certain things you don't want to mix. I don't think I'd mix those two together. I think, you know, you want to listen to John talk. I'll get John to whisper things to Alex, and Alex can give me that energy he brings to the show. Oh, right, like have John whisper in certain instructions.

It would be like one step. He'd fuck it up, though. Like he wouldn't really know. Step on his leg. No, no, over, over the leg. You know? So he's going to be there. Yeah, he's coming.

I think he got very excited when I said Eddie Bravo John's gonna be there as well yep John flies in I think he might have landed already

yeah John's here tomorrow he's on the podcast tomorrow you're his number one guy right now so you know what I mean like yeah yeah we'll give it a bit of time

before I claim it yeah well we're hoping we can fix Gordon whatever his stomach issue is so are you done filming The Ultimate Fighter? Finished.

Finished filming, yeah. How many weeks all told? We did four and a half weeks, I think it was. Four and a half weeks, but yeah, all done now. And this is the return of The Ultimate Fighter for the last, how many years it's been off the air? Three? Yeah, two or three. Two or three years?

Yeah, I know. But that's what it's called, the return of The Ultimate Fighter was it how was it for you it was good you know obviously we can't give too much away but it was good it was a great experience for all of us uh and uh it's pretty interesting as well how is the talent level of the upcoming guys the guys that are on the show yeah good yeah they're they're great uh mate like cool dudes are all actually pretty pretty good dudes you know from from both shows. But, yeah, obviously, yeah, a little bit gets heated here and there. But they were some good fights as well.

If you look back at The Ultimate Fighter and you see, like, over the years, it's amazing. The level of talent just keeps getting better and better and better. You know, in the beginning days, the guys were, you know, you had guys from, like, smaller circuits. And, you know, guys who are maybe some were veterans, maybe guys were, you know, you had guys from like smaller circuits and, you know, guys who are maybe some were veterans, maybe some were beginners. But now, like if you watch Daniel White's Tuesday Night Contender series, it's like so many of those guys are really talented. It's pretty amazing.

Like you see guys that have UFC debuts and you watch them and you go, wow, these guys are good, like really smooth, good flow, great transitions, great overall octagon IQ. I'm noticing that as well. Even, as you said, Dana White Contender Series. But, yeah, because you did watch it back in the day. Obviously, it was a little bit different, I guess, but obviously the knowledge is more out there now and everyone's sharing that knowledge in big gyms and all that type of stuff.

But I feel like I've noticed that a lot, the level in this. Even though they're all entertaining, they know exactly what they're doing in there as well. And it only makes sense that you bring in a fellow Aussie to be your grappling coach. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when Alex gave me the call to come in. Talk up to this thing. Bring that sucker up to your face.

There you go. When Alex gave me the call to jump in, yeah, I was very excited. Obviously a big MMA fan, too scared to do MMA myself uh but i really had a lot of fun jumping in with the guys and uh the level of grappling was awesome did you we've got a kickboxing session in as well oh yeah i saw that he fucked me up he fucked me up on the wall and grappling for 10 minutes each but then i got five minutes to push it out so that it's like you don't have to do that but just get it like right in front of us yeah there you go like there you can move so you don't feel uncomfortable had you done a lot of

striking training before I mean ten years ago when I was sort of getting into jiu-jitsu I would just put on the MMA gloves and me and my buddies would just beat the shit out of each other we'd go home with headaches and stuff but really I would say no formal training. I wouldn't have put gloves on for 10 years. But really, I created an OnlyFans account for a bit of a laugh. And I wanted to put Alex on, but I figured it would only be fair. So we'd do 10 minutes of grappling, 10 minutes of wall work,

because I guess wall work is sort of like the intermediary, but then five minutes of kickboxing. I was only meant to do kickboxing, but he beat the shit out of me so bad, I had to shoot a takedown. I'm like, that's not the rules. What's going on here? He stood it up. He got the cameraman to give a fucking referee stand-up.

I was like, this is unfair. Let me survive a little longer. I think it was very fair, because it was just kickboxing. Well, you've never had any itch at all to do MMA? A little bit, but I used to go to university and study psychology, and I remember all it took was one section on traumatic brain injury,

and I was like, what do they get paid? That's probably not enough. That's not enough for me. I've got footage of him hitting pads with Joe Lopez, so I might put that up. Yeah, give the people a laugh. It wasn't bad, actually. It wasn't bad.

He had some technique in there. I mean, people will be entertained by it. They'll get a good laugh out of it for sure. It wasn't that bad. Well, when you see him, world champion, obviously fine. Does it give you pause? A little bit. I mean, so obviously we were talking before the show about the Gabby Garcia thing,

and I always say I would definitely take an MMA fight with Gabby Garcia because obviously we both can't fight either. You know what I mean? It'd be a fair fight there. So if that happened in Japan, I would probably jump in and keep doing it if the money was right. Probably come back and train with Alex for it. Dude, she's beat the shit out of some...

I don't want to be a part of that one. She has beat the shit out of some ladies. Have you seen some of those fights? Yeah, I mean, they're entertaining. I remember she beat her... What are they doing over there? In Japan, they go, what do you do?

You work at a laundromat? Come here. Want to fight Gabby Garcia? Like, they take some lady that look... She looks like she's 100 pounds lighter than her and she was 55. she's 55 years old that's so crazy i would take that contract because they're like you want to beat up some old women i would i mean if the price is right i jumped in for that for sure you wouldn't do it just for the hate that you would get online i mean come on man you didn't want to post an alex jones clip and you're worried about well i want to beat up old ladies i'm worried about getting banned though i can't lose the instagram account explain to me that you guys were saying that you're shadow band

so i i just i think i couldn't tell you exactly why i'm shadow band but but but i am i've noticed that there's a few ufc fighters as well that are shadow band i don't know if it's because of the sport or what. I don't think it's anything that I've put up. You know what I mean? Like the content, you can understand with Craig Jones. Listen, if Derek Lewis...

You can understand with Craig Jones. But I've got a children's book, so you know what I mean? Yeah. I'm a family man. Obviously, I like to have a bit of fun, but I ain't putting anything out there that I should be shadow banned for,

but I am. Now, when you say you're shadow banned, what makes you say that? Because say if you were to look me up, that's what shadow ban is all about. If you try and look us up, you literally need to have to write our full name to get us popping up. I'll get all my fan pages coming up before me. Let me see. I'm going to do that right now. Okay.

So let's go right now. We'll go to Instagram. Is that the case if they're following you as well? If they're following you already, I believe it should pop up. Okay But I definitely know right away you pop up comes up straight away I definitely know why I got up first. All right. I got I typed in Alex and you popped up. Oh, okay Oh, they're the bands off. Maybe the bands off but we may now I'm doing a podcast with Craig Jones They're gonna ban me again, all right? I think if somebody doesn't know who you are,

like if you think about how many Alex's there are out there in the world, if someone's just searching for you, it's probably just a flaw in their algorithm. A lot of people think, the reason why I'm asking this is there are definitely people that are shadow banned, but there's a lot more people that think they're shadow banned. And usually when people think they're shadow banned, I'm like, bro, you got to stop paying attention to your numbers.

You're getting wacky. Because you're just like, why am I not getting more interactions? Why are more people not paying attention to my posts? I don't think they would shadow ban you. If they're not shadow banned, and Derek Lewis, Derek Lewis has legitimate homicides on his Instagram and he's got people getting hit by trucks falling off of trees like if you want to watch fucked up shit you go to Derek and it's always he's okay that's the best Instagram page for sure he's the best

he Derek Lewis is the best he's the best he knows how to use Instagram better than anybody funny dude too yeah but that's it's funny because you say that but I know because I remember we looked into it and someone said that oh you must be because they explained it to me i didn't even know what shadow banning was and then i end up going what i told him to type in a couple of other names from ufc and there was a lot of them that that were like they wouldn't come up and all our fan pages and all that will come up first before us but hopefully it's changed and hopefully you don't fuck that up yeah i don't jamie you're skeptical about that stuff, right? Aren't you? You know more about it than I do.

Maybe, but there could be reasons. I think Joe's saying the right thing. You're probably not posting anything negative that would require any sort of shadow banning. I mean, I checked myself. It's really based off of what you do on the site. So I typed in Alex. It's not coming up, but if I hit V, it shows itself. But there's someone with an Alex V.

That's their account name. You would think that would show up before yours because that's his actual account. I don't know. Yeah, it's complicated. Can you check me? I'm pretty confident. Yours was a little harder to find because I got shadow banned for something I did in Texas. I messed up.

What'd you do? So we're in a porn store, like a used goods store, right? It's like a famous good porn store I can't even say the right word PAWM Goods porn store my Literally the most disgusting store on earth Porn store That would be literally the most disgusting store on earth. A used goods porn store. Okay. So you're a pawn shop.

Yeah. So a pawn shop. Yeah. My accent kills it. But we went in. It's a famous place. It sells a lot of messed up stuff, right? Like they even had a mummified dead body in there for $15,000.

What? So I'm in there and the guy was like, you can film whatever you want. So I'm filming in the store. I'm walking around and we get to the World War II section. And they have a lot of obviously Nazi stuff in there. So I'm like seeing all this Nazi helmets and symbols for sale and I just start filming. That is why I'm like, look at everything this place is selling. And that just freaked out.

People reported me because you can't, even in the context, if you went to a museum, you cannot show the Nazi symbol, which I was like, I just showed a dead body, but I'm now in trouble with Instagram for showing Nazi symbols symbols wow that's wild that's interesting like what if you had like a a photo of like himmler and hitler or something like that context doesn't matter that seems crazy doesn't it i mean it's a historical photograph yeah i mean it was a learning uh a learning experience for me i had to get uh i had a connection a guy that worked at Facebook I had to get him to go in and do a request to give me back some privileges and stuff Wow just from filming something that's for sale in a store yeah that seems kind of crazy it

seems like they when you do stuff like that you give that symbol even more power right if you make it like forbidden where you can't even post it. Yeah, for sure. I would agree with that. Yeah, then crazy Nazis. It's, like, almost like you're giving them more juice. Yeah, I mean, it's just World War II stuff. It's not, like, modern-day Nazis.

You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I do know what you mean. That doesn't make any sense to me. That's... What's up? You looking up? I'm looking at their web, their Instagram account. They have a ring with whoa that's crazy they sell some crazy shit in there they

had like a an old cowboy that was selling his trigger finger in there literally the finger off he's gone from back in the Wild West days so this is this thing is mummified sort of finger look is that which way does the Nazi one goes it go the other way because there's a left one and a right one right His finger. His finger. His mummified sort of finger. Look at, is that, which way does the Nazi one go? Does it go the other way? Because there's a left one and a right one, right? Yeah, this has mentioned the Buddhism and Hinduism use of it, but I personally don't.

Although it says on the top right here, it's distinguished left-facing and right-facing. Oh, okay. The term swastika is often used to distinguish the left-facing from the right-facing swastika symbols, a meaning which developed in 19th century scholarship. Both the right-facing and the left-facing variants are employed in Hinduism and Buddhism. However, the left-facing is more commonly used in Buddhism than Hinduism,

and the right-facing is more commonly used in Hinduism than Buddhism. Okay, that doesn't help. So you reckon the algorithm can tell which direction the symbol goes? How the fuck could it possibly? I think somebody must have reported you. That's the only thing that makes sense to me yeah yeah it happened real quick wasn't that it was an okinawan symbol too like there was a back in the day i remember when i was a kid there was a shotokan school that had like a swastika as one of their patches i'm trying to remember this correctly but because I remember saying what the fuck is that

and they were like no it's the wrong way but it was basically a swastika and it was some emblem for this Okinawan karate school is that true yeah let me see what that looks like same thing yeah there it is and uh there's actually a Hindu temple near my house, my old house in California, that had all these swastikas with the dots like that all around the outside of it. And they had explained. There were signs all over the place. This does not have anything to do with Nazi Germany. This building was made in the 1920s, and this is the whole reason why it's here.

And la-la-la. You guys are definitely giving me Shadow Bandai oh my god there's fucking swastikas all over the map oh my god that's crazy so if it's inverted if it's facing the other direction that becomes a Nazi symbol it's just nuts that a weird design

that's been around for thousands of years has become connected so horribly to this one point in history with the Nazis that all these people that had it forever can't use it anymore. Manji symbol. Japan has decided to update the Manji symbol as well as a number of others to be more tourist friendly with the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. Wow. Look at the caption. Buddhist temples will be represented by a tiered pagoda.

Huh. So they changed it. Yeah. They gave into it. Yeah, I guess it's just, it's problematic as they say. So you filmed this for five weeks you were filming it for five weeks just under five weeks

and how many episodes will air I think there will be 13 or 12 12 or 13 episodes I think and they'll all be on ESPN yeah ESPN this is the first time

they've aired on ESPN so the return of the Ultimate Fighter will be on ESPN I don't think they're yeah they have never had the ultimate how was it working with Brian Ortega to be honest maybe he doesn't say much he doesn't say much look here I don't know like yeah I'm a bit over him to be honest yeah just a couple of things you know I mean like I just think he's fake I think he's a he's

fake and I don't believe his shit. So that's just sort of how it is with me. That's what I think. When you say fake, like, in what way is he fake? Oh, man, just, yeah. I just think, you know, he plays a nice guy and some of the shit he says, like, I just think it's all bullshit. But, yeah, I guess you can watch the show and, like, sort of see, like, with little things. But, I don't know, just even with a couple of things.

I don't think he's that bad of a guy. Maybe I'm just looking for things to hate on him for. I'm sure you are. Yeah, probably. You know what I mean? So I'm just sitting there being like, nah, fuck Brian Ortega. I'm going to find something to hate him for. But maybe that's what it was.

But I mean, still, yeah, little things I was just like, yeah. But I mean, like I said, it's not hard to get under his skin. Even me just saying that, I guarantee he's boiling up. so maybe that's going to be strategy for my next fight because i know how easily he's triggered so i'm just going to be like hey brian you that's it when are you guys scheduled to fight at the end of the series well yeah yeah so when it is yeah so uh from what i'm told i don't know if i'm gonna get in trouble saying this i'm not sure but i think it's like september early september so you'll be fighting him sometime in september and that will be in the From what I'm told, I don't know if I'm going to get in trouble saying this, I'm not sure, but I think it's September, early September. So you'll be fighting him sometime in September, and that will be in the United States?

Yeah, I'm guessing. Nice. Interesting. It's a great fight. If you look at the fight on paper, especially after his fight with the Korean zombie, it's a fun fight to watch. Yeah, he definitely looked good in that fight. He surprised me in that fight too. He definitely changed his game a little bit and fought a different fight that I wasn't expecting.

But again, I'm confident in my abilities. I just believe I'll be too much. The beautiful thing about it, I can say what I want, but I get to prove it soon. I wish I got to prove it March when I was scheduled to fight, but obviously that didn't happen. I'll prove that very soon anyway. it's all good it's a special division man that 145 is a really special division because there's so much talent man it's uh i think it's hard to say what the it's between i think it's between 55 and 45 like the most amount of like real top level talent but yeah 45 is just so filled, so filled with guys.

Yeah, there is, man. There's a lot of guys that are coming. Even some of the guys that are higher in the rankings, like just starting to come up, there's a lot of dangerous guys. And that's the beautiful thing about it. That motivates me. I'm looking forward to it.

These are the guys I want. I want these guys that are people. I love being the underdog as well. Even though I'm champ, you're still going to have the doubters and all that, and I love that. You know what I mean? I want to be the underdog, and I want them doubters, and I love proving the underdog as well. Even though I'm champ, you're still going to have the doubters and all that, and I love that. You know what I mean?

I want to be the underdog, and I want them doubters, and I love proving people wrong. You like being the underdog? Yeah, I do. I do, man. I really do. It's got to be hard to be the underdog when you're the fucking champ. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

I know. But, I mean, I guess I wouldn't say underdog, but, I mean, the doubters maybe. Right. Maybe, yeah, and I use the doubters as fuel. Right. So, again, I love proving them wrong. If I was an underdog for this fight, I don't know if I would be, but if I was, I would not care one bit. I'd be like, all right, at least I get to make my boys

or whoever's betting on me more money. Let's go, you know what I mean? So I'm all good. Now, you guys were supposed to, you were scheduled to fight, but then you got COVID. And when you got COVID, when you got tested, initially when you got tested, you didn't feel sick, right? Man, before, because we got tested a fair bit.

So I'm guessing before we went into the bubble, I must have got it from someone or whatever. And then, you know, a few days later, we got tested a couple of times. It didn't pop up. But then we got tested, yeah, one of the days. And that was like right at the end of my camp, because I went there a bit

early to for brad riddell to to corner or be be with him because he fought the week before me so i did my last week of training hard training in vegas after traveling and doing all that and then i got covered i must have had it uh trained like hard you know we we get stuck into it so i did back to back because the the schedule got tightened up because we we arrived a bit later in the week. So back-to-back, really, really solid sessions while I probably had COVID. But, I mean, I sort of had started getting headaches and that before. I was like, man, I'm getting headaches.

It's Vegas, maybe, you know, just dehydrated and whatnot. But, yeah, then I tested positive and then I started getting the symptoms after that. And when you say, like, your schedule tightened up, so you guys have a very rigid program that you follow no matter what, like at this day you're doing this. Yeah, exactly. So we've got, you know, we've got a few hard sessions. And when I say hard sessions, you know, they're, you know, they're mind blowing type of sessions off for some people that, that will, the watcher, you know, that's just our schedule. And, uh, usually you have good rest in between them. And like, that's, you know, you, you need to have the rest in between them and like that's you know you need to have the rest you want good recovery so you're able to do them you know and this camp was

beautiful we we did it absolutely we nailed the camp man i was doing some of the hardest sessions but i was recovering on point my recovery was on point i was like man like you know i'm getting older but i feel like the camp's getting easier like how's that happening right now but uh that that week got tightened up. So I ended up doing a couple of these really, really high loaded sessions. Uh, they end up being like back to back where usually I would have like high,

low session, high, low session. What was the decision? What made the decision to do high back to back? just, just, again,

it was just more the fact that, uh, you know, we just need to do a couple. I still don't think it was that, but I felt fine while I was doing that. I didn't think nothing of it, but because I end up getting pretty rattled from the COVID, that's why I was like, man, maybe my immune system was down at the end of camp, obviously dieting and all that type of stuff.

But I felt fine, but I'm pretty sure I started feeling some of the symptoms uh before i was getting into them hard sessions as well yeah all the fighters that i know that got it bad it was all the same sort of situation when they were in camp really beaten up like cody garbrandt same thing with cody had covid for probably weeks and was training with it yeah before he even got tested and and then they're like bro you got covid and he's like oh well that explains a lot and then you know he was you got coveted and he's like oh well that explains a lot and then you know he was pretty up for a few months but yeah he had trained like real hard like well that's that's obviously gonna you know yeah play a big factor and you and the thing is like you're here and then you hear like the hazmat uh you know sort of situations

coated garbant so like we wanted to keep an eye on it but you know what i mean and that's why we got it and then they enough i know you got the pneumonia and then uh you know then the symptoms uh yeah i felt the symptoms a fair bit but then uh then i got that pneumonia and then like the sort of the infection just started getting a little bit worse so i ended up getting you know pink coughing up like pinky bloody sort of stuff and then the blood just got more and more so then we went back and that's when they got me on the medication and then yeah cuz I was like coughing up blood and all told how sick like how long we stick for probably would be maybe ten days or something maybe lucky and they like seven or ten

days did they do IV vitamins or anything like that yeah once once I was in the hospital that they were doing that yeah but I mean as soon as I got on the medication you know if it dexamethasone, I just made improvements straight away. Yeah. Yeah. And you got it a while ago, right? You got COVID a while back.

Yeah, so I had it probably August last year. So we were training, obviously, during the lockdown in New York. And I believe one of the Gracies, I won't say which one, had come back into the gym, and I believe he had COVID. Son of a gun. And, like, all of us got it. Basically, I think there were 20 of us training secretly in the blue basement. Not so secret anymore.

We just spilled the beans. We're out of there now. It's safe. And, yeah, basically all 20, 25 of us got it. For me, it was nothing too bad. But, obviously, I don't train as crazy as, obviously, someone preparing for a fight. But, yeah, very was nothing too bad. But obviously, I didn't train as crazy as obviously someone preparing for a fight. But yeah, very mild symptoms for me. But what wasn't mild for you was when you got vaccinated.

Yeah, so I got vaccinated probably six weeks ago. And the logic behind it was my family's back in Australia. So I haven't seen my parents, my brother for probably close to two years now. And Australia is going to be definitely one of those places you're going to need the vaccine, I assume, to travel there. So I went and got it and yeah, it was a rough time. Obviously had the standard side effects of fever, cold sweats, a lot of exhaustion, headaches, but then my lymph nodes started to swell up and I started to get some crazy pregnant looking stomach and actually had to pull out of a grappling match for it so i was on the ultimate fighter so i was going to bail out one of the weekends on the show go compete but yeah it was just for a week i think i was carrying this fluid for close to a week and they never drained it to

see what it is or anything like that no i just peed it out eventually folks was telling me he's like sleep upright pull your pants above your stomach and yeah eventually it came out of there but uh because you could say it like he was wearing pants and like you could see it like sort of like the fluid would like get caught there yeah and i'm like yeah just show jamie show the uh the image of it because it's very it's fine because who else got it who else got the covid test uh sorry no who else got the the vaccines it was a few of yous me woods and joe all got it and uh yeah i was the only one that really got messed up woods woods said he felt pretty shit for probably three, four days. Did Woods have COVID at any time?

I don't believe so. Neither has Joe. Joe's somehow immune. He was with you throughout the whole. Joe, mate, like we were, even when we got it, the four of us got it. There was like four of us that got it in our camp. Joe was training with us. Like he was sharing drinks, everything with one of the guys that,

you know what I mean, and just didn't get it. Yeah. They they don't know why they i mean they think there's a bunch of factors they think it's uh your blood type it's definitely how healthy your immune system is based on like how healthy you're eating exercise all that stuff but they don't they don't know why it doesn't make any sense because some people like they drink they smoke they live in a house filled with people that got covid they don't get it it's weird it's crazy yeah because joe joe does like to have a good time and yeah he's joe hates me saying this but i've been told so old piss heads don't get that's that's a good image but let's go to the image before that that's the one you really see it on the side see where his pants are yeah very strange yeah it's fucking weird i mean i was worried to be honest, like, I remember the medic on tough, he's like, man, that's just lymphatic fluid.

It should drain. But it just, it would slowly getting bigger and bigger. And when I would walk, it would be, I wouldn't say it was too painful, but it was quite uncomfortable. So I'd walk around holding my stomach and stuff. And I was just like, at the point it started to drain, I was like, I'll give it one more day and then we'll investigate. But, yeah, I was peeing out some crazy colors. So like very strong colors. Did you take any photos of it?

Of the crazy colors? No, I should have though. Damn. I want to see that. One doctor told me if you're peeing out some crazy colors, maybe it affected your liver or something. But yeah, we've been too busy with Ultima Flighter to be honest to get anything else done. And so the medic wasn't concerned. They were just, they was a little worried because it was weird, but they weren't like,

hey, we gotta get you to a doctor. He definitely wasn't too concerned. What was funny actually was when I brought those symptoms to him, he's like, well, man, it's a vaccine. It's sort of, he's like, we're in sort of unknown territory here. He himself even said, he's like,

I had Johnson and Johnson and he said he was the sickest he's ever been in his life for 12 hours and then he snapped out of it. So nothing he told me was reassuring at all, unfortunately. So you're supposed to get a second shot though, right? I was meant to get it. So Woods and Joe went and got it. I actually took him to the place and I didn't get it.

They were definitely calling me a pussy for not getting it. But who knows what would have happened if I did get that second shot. Yeah, that's a... Because you knew you were competing as well didn't you uh i knew i'd be competing because i pulled out of that match and we were looking to reschedule that for mid june and i was just like man i don't want to miss another week of training potentially uh then obviously this comp we i hadn't known when i was going to compete it was real last minute this one this friday but yeah so i really just didn't get it again because I was worried about potentially missing more training. But yeah, after talking to some people, probably for the best, I don't get it. Yeah, I don't know. Obviously, I'm not a medical expert,

but what I'm reading is that people that have already had COVID that get vaccinated are more likely to have issues than just regular people. And it's still a low number. You hear a lot of people get issues. You've got to think of how many people have been vaccinated. I think at this point in time, are they saying it's like 50% of all adults in America have been vaccinated? I think that's the most recent number. Which is what?

More than 100 million people, I think. Which is pretty crazy. It's just one of those things is that what it is yeah i wish i could tell you you know i wish i could tell you you're gonna be fine like uh take that second shot but yeah there's no uh no assurance of that really so it stopped it affected your training for how many days i would say i probably missed a good seven days of training i think oh i mean they came to a point where the fluid was almost gone but i was just like man i don't know if i should be grappling and squashing this just didn't want to grapple me that was all it was the fluid was gone and it was just like nah you know

but now you're fine yeah back fully back to normal yes obviously i feel great because i'm gonna compete this week if there was any sort of uh anything dicey going on i definitely wouldn't have taken the match and how long did it take before you like fully ramped up your cardio sessions and all your training sessions so that you felt like i'm not even sure to be honest i felt like uh just getting back into training it was pretty pretty normal like uh my fitness level was low just having missed the week, but I didn't feel like there was any long-lasting side effects. But I guess that'll be to be determined, right?

Have you taken a week off before? But you guys train so much. One of the crazy things about the Donaher Death Squad is you guys are seven days a weekers. Seven days a week, yeah. Unfortunately, John holds us to a high standard because he's there seven days a week. I wish that guy would take a vacation that it's one of the craziest things I've ever heard of my life yeah a guy like that who literally used to teach philosophy at Columbia fucking brilliant guy who also is like super

high-level grappler himself and decides to dedicate his life to training the best grapplers on earth and has had these insane results I mean it's a really wild story if you looked at the John Donahue origin story is like a Marvel Comics you know like some sort of a mentor and Doctor Strange or something like that you know I mean like he doesn't seem like a real guy for sure he's like some sort of mythical sort of being like because most people were like you've shot the shit with him you know what i mean but most people never see that side of him yeah they just see his instructionals or his interviews and stuff where

he's very very serious but uh yeah he's it's crazy how knowledgeable he is in jiu-jitsu and what's funny is i sort of taught myself leg locks in australia watching his guys compete on EBI and stuff. Like I had no idea what I was doing, but I would be like, I'd watch them using these moves because they didn't teach it in instructionals back then. So we were just left trying to figure it out. I'm sure like Eddie's guys were trying to figure it out as well. But that was how I learned leg locks. And then it was just funny to ultimately one day join the team that I'd been stealing their moves from for years. I couldn't beat Gordon, so I was like, fuck it, I'll jump in as well.

Well, it's so interesting. When I was training a lot, there was very little leg locks. Like, I remember Dean Lister in 2003 in Abu Dhabi, you know, he was leg locking a lot of guys, and Dean was like one of the few guys. There was like a few other guys, but he was one of the real top level guys who was winning by heel hook and even ankle locks and stuff like knee bars. And then John and him have this one conversation one time where he says to John, why would you ignore 50 percent of the body? And John's like, ding. And then he just develops this entire system based on leg locks and then you guys start dominating.

Gary Tonin, Gordon, Nicky, you, all these guys start dominating. Eddie start dominating with leg locks and then everybody else is trying to dissect your system and put it together. It's really crazy because that's not that long. If you think about how long arm bars have been around rear naked chokes how much standard jiu-jitsu techniques then all of a sudden somewhere around like what year was it 2015 or something like that like what year did leg locks just start taking over yeah definitely I would say around 2015 I mean indirectly I guess Eddie Bravo's sort of responsible for this in

a way because he gave the guys the platform to demonstrate this because in jiu-jitsu at the time apart from adcc you couldn't really do heel hooks in any tournaments right so a lot of people didn't put any energy into it because they were like why am i going to become a master in this skill set when there's no platform for me to use them on so yeah we had husamar paul horace terrifying guy yeah terrifying guy in the uf. And he would heel hook you and hold on to it. Yeah. And just not let it go, which was terrible. You know, I mean, he ruined guys knees and they, he's the only guy that I know that's been kicked out of two organizations. The PFL kicked him out and then the UFC kicked him out first. Then the PFL kicked him out too.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank God he disappeared from grappling and everything. He was actually one of the catalysts for me to learn leg locks because I qualified for ADCC, and I was in the same weight division as him. And I was like, I've got to learn this shit or this guy's going to potentially injure me forever. You know what I mean? Right, right.

That is what you had to think too. Do you ever see the match with David Avalon where they rolled out of bounds? Have you seen it? I think I have. They rolled out of bounds, and he was attempting to get a heel hook on Avalon. They roll out, and so they restart him.

But I don't know who the fuck allowed this, where you restart and let a guy have a fully sunken heel hook and go, ready, go. That's never, a static position like that doesn't occur. You never have hands on someone and go, ready, go. Where you let them like fully secure and adjust. Lock themselves in their cores ready to just. Because it's all in motion.

Jiu-Jitsu is in motion. But why would he get into that? You know? Let him get the balance in. What do you say if you're David? If you're in the middle of this match, what do you do? You say, no, I quit. Like, no, you can't get a full heel hook on me.

Even though he kind of had it, he was defending it so they let him lock in he just fucking yanks it and held it and then you know see him tapping like it just mangled I love the aftermath you remember the aftermath how Harris gets up celebrates walks he does a circle comes back to shake David Avalon's hand and David doesn't shake it and then power is like shocked he's like why would he not shake my hand? He's an odd guy. I had to match with him.

One of the most boring matches in history. But we signed a contract for a 190 pound match. And he shows up the day before with a note from his doctor. And he's 220 pounds. And he says, I will die if I cut any weight. And the promoter of Kasai was like that photo actually yeah that was crazy he was jacked so he was 220. he showed up at 220. and he used to fight in the ufc at 85 85 and he had had actually he even made 170 for a few fights yeah dude when he fought gary tony he looked like he ate a whole pharmacy.

Yeah. He looked like he ate all the drugs. Like everything they had. He's like, let's go. Let's see what that one does. Shoot that one in here. He was so big when he had that match with Gary. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. I don't know. What did he weigh then? Look at the size of him. Yeah, that's the one I remember seeing. Jesus Christ. Look at the size of him. Fuck.

He looks like a fake person. He looks like Wario from Mario Kart or whatever. I know, and look at that mustache, too. I wouldn't want them fucking arms around my heels, that's for sure. Oh, fuck all that. Get that away from my legs. Well, he had a horrific childhood. If you talk to any of the guys from his team that knew him,

when he was insanely poor, like he used to have to eat pig slop, and he worked on a farm. It was just the story behind his childhood is terrible, and I guess just it made him a ferocious fighter. Just whatever that horrible childhood was like, it made him literally, like that guy got a hold of people's legs. He would go like this on the sidelines.

And back then, really, he was like one of the sidelines waiting for and back then really he was like one of the most sophisticated guys in mma when it came to heel hooks when he'd wrap a hold of your legs man you had a real problem he must have got some nutrition in there somewhere though he looks pretty damn damn good eventually eventually he got nutrition yeah and a lot of pharmacological interventions i would actually sympathize with him in mma because i remember thinking i'd watch his fights and i'd be like he's not a striker and the striker would be punching him, punching him, punching him. He'd eventually get to the heel and be like in MMA the striker would tap. And it's like he's like well I want to, let's even it up.

You punched me in the face for the last 15 minutes. Let me get a couple of pups. I'm going to fucking break your leg. Yeah, but he even did it to Jake Shields. He poked Jake in the eye before that as well. Oh, that's right. Jake was so angry. Jake multiple times, right?

Yeah. Yeah. He poked him in the eye and then as well. Oh, that's right. Jake was so angry. Multiple times, right? Yeah. Yeah. He poked him in the eye and then held a Kimura, right? Yeah. And Jake was actually out grappling him. And that's why he started resorting to cheating. He really takes advantage of the fact that people do perceive, like he's self-aware enough to know what you think of him. Like to know that you think he's a little slow.

He takes advantage of that and skirts the rules a little bit. So I wouldn't say he's like a sophisticated guy per se, but he's self-aware enough to know what he can get away with in matches. That's interesting. When did you have a match with him? Was it before or after Gary had a match with him? After Gary. And Gary actually, in that match, Gary actually popped in pretty bad.

Like he injured his legs pretty bad. So when we had the match and I came out with John Danner, cause I was like, well, we're going to do the camp against the scariest leg lock in the world. I better have John in the corner. And I don't know if that triggered pal Harris to not commit to anything, but what happened in the match was nothing was happening and he was stalling. So the referee started giving him penalties, but in my head, I'm like, this guy knows he's gonna lose. He's taking penalties. Eventually, he's gonna attack. So I'm waiting, I'm waiting,

and then he's just, the time runs out. I'm like, what the fuck? This guy knew he was losing, he just didn't try to make up that ground. Maybe his legs were so fucked up from the Gary match that he just didn't wanna risk it. I think that was probably, definitely played a factor. It's such a weird injury, right?

Because if you get your legs locked and you get like heel hooked or something like that you're tearing your meniscus and that never gets better could it be an ego thing or where he's like i don't i can't get my legs out i want a leg lock get submit from a leg lock but i'm just not going to go there just against i get submitted maybe have you seen the meow brothers yeah what? Have you seen the clip of him with the toe hold? Well, I've seen the clip of him with a knee bar where his knee is like bent the other way. It's like whoever he's grappling with. Paul Tyratola, yeah.

Yes. Full on, like hips down, like the knee is like completely hyperextended, like many degrees the wrong direction. And you watch it, like, and the wrong direction. And you're watching it like, and the guy never taps. Yeah, it's crazy as well because these guys, like obviously in MMA, you guys for the most part

are making quite good money. But you'll see grappling tournaments all the time where, oh, watch your guy let his leg break for no money. I'm like, what are you doing, bro? That's never going to be the same. What is the Meow Brothers deal?

I just, a lot of Brazilians just don't believe in leg locks. Like there's guys like Leandro Lowe, when I had a match with him, just completely let his leg snap because he was always said, he's like, I'm never going to tap to a lower body submission. So he just let you break his leg? Let me break his leg, yeah. He, actually I put him in a heel hook and he exploded the wrong way and kind of broke his own leg. And then he just shakes it out and keeps going.

That happens all the time. It's honestly crazy how many people let things break in jiu-jitsu oh my god well that's what i mean like they're just they tell me like no i ain't tapping to that yeah like vinnie yeah vinnie magalhaes i watched that live and i was like what is happening here because that was one of the ones where i was like what's going on you know i was thinking the same thing. Yeah. I was like, are you sure you want to keep going? Because you felt his leg break. Yeah, because I knew I had done substantial damage. But I was like, does Vinny not know? I was like, I feel like I should stop and tell him what's wrong.

And again, Vinny did stop. He goes, I think you broke my leg. So I was like, well, you're going to keep going. I'm going to go straight back for that leg again. You said that to him? That was my thought process and when I put him in the heel hook the second time There was no resistance and I started seeing like the bone Starting to poke out of the skin. Oh fuck didn't break the skin, but I was looking at it I was like, you know what? I think I like Vinny's actually a really nice guy really nice guy

I just felt bad that he made it his stick leg locks don't work You shouldn't do that because I mean eventually, eventually, even if you're flexible, like for him, his knee and ankles were flexible, but the weakest link was his fibula. So his fibula snapped and disconnected from his ankle. Oh. Oh. How is he now?

Is he okay? He's fine, yeah. Surprisingly, I think the tib-fib breaks actually come back a little quicker than the the knee except for obviously the ptsd from looking at your broken leg but at the time it's when i spoke to vinnie after the match he seemed um like he was most worried about what his wife was going to say that seemed like the priority number one for him why was he worried about what his wife was because i think at the time she didn't want him to go compete because it was during covid and stuff oh and he was like i think he like, I think he was like, no, I got to do it. And then he went and he broke his leg.

And it's like, oh, all these things at once. But honestly, that's the craziest, one of the craziest moments in grappling where I was just like, I was like, how much is Cheo paying you? He's not paying me enough to fucking let my leg break. Like, what's going on behind the scenes here? That's just so nuts. Like, some guys, it's just pride, I guess, huh? Yeah, I've got none of that. Hey, you get it, I'm tapping, you know what I mean?

Good for you. Good for you. Live to battle another day, man. For sure. Especially with leg breaks. After watching Wideman's leg break a couple weeks ago against Hall, that was dark. See it snap like that and him fall over and the bone

poked through the back of his uh calf that's hard to watch that's hard to watch i'll be honest i'm still leg kicking there yeah i'm sure that's my thing right are you worried at all about that nah nah i'm not i'm not i'm not saying i can't have but i don't want to jinx myself but nah ah man like obviously man there's a yeah it's yeah, that's just the game, I guess, as well. But, I mean, like, I'm not – every kick of mine isn't 100%. Right, of course. I use it for so many different things. Yeah.

So, you know, obviously, if I feel like they're going to be checking something really good, I'm going to be pretty cautious of that. I'm not just going to run straight into a knee or something like that. I'm not saying that, you know, you can see that coming. But, you know, I'm going to – there cautious of that. I'm not just going to run straight into a knee or something like that. I'm not saying that you can see that coming, but there will be awareness of it probably now because after seeing that, I was like, oh, yeah, I might have to look into this a little bit more. But, I mean, no, I'll still be using them.

Well, with Chris, if you watch it in slow motion, he winds up and throws everything, everything into the first kick he throws. I mean, it's just full body torque 100% I guess it I guess he just decided right away he's just gonna really damage this shit out of your eyes leg and then the first kick he throws you hear the snap and the snap was look at this fucking he's it's just so crazy that it happened to him I know Man, look where it hit as well. Oh, look at it folded. The skin's folded.

That hit on more on the side of the leg, did it? Or did I? Look at this. Oh, man. There's not enough money for that. The crazy thing is there's only been three leg breaks like that in the history of the UFC, and he's been involved in two of them. He's been on the receiving end and the giving end. Yeah, that's crazy. It is crazy. What the fuck of the UFC and he's been involved in two of them he's been on the receiving end yeah that's crazy it is crazy what the fuck are the odds

all the thousands and thousands and thousands of fights of the UFC three leg breaks he's been one of them yeah I was looking at barbecue at the time I just heard him like the fuck I run inside and then I look seeing that I was like what the fuck and then I'll oh wow didn't catch on straight away and then people like oh how's that look they're talking about you know anderson silver and he's doing it and then it just clicked i was like oh you know you know it was a blowout absolute blowout for me but the other time i've seen it is in kickboxing with uh tyrone spong and uh go khan saki i saw that he handled it so well yeah he's just like yeah my leg broke just chilled out

yeah he just laid down just sat down that was crazy he handled it that well, man. Yeah. He was just like, yep, my leg broke, just chilled out. Yeah, he just laid down, just sat down. That was crazy. He handled it that well. I'd be freaking the fuck out. Yeah, 100% you would. Yeah, he's that guy. Tyrone Spong is a guy where I'm like, man, I'm kind of surprised he hasn't made more of a splash. Because he was such a terrifying fucking striker in kickboxing.

And then he decides he's going to go over to boxing. And he had a real chance with a top contender at one point in time. But something happened. And, like, he tested positive for something. And they pulled him out of the fight. He failed the drug test? Yeah. Something happened.

And he said it was, like, a tainted supplement or something like that. We don't have that in grappling, luckily. Yeah. Here it is with Gokhan. I mean, this was a great fucking fight, too. Right there. Boom. There it is. He just looks at it, eh? He looks at it like, ah, shit. I mean this was a great fucking fight too right there boom there it is

he just looks at it eh he looks at it ah shit that's the most relaxed response eh yeah I mean the fucking pain they go touch gloves you know

the guy the ref just kicks his leg yeah that's Steve Mazzagati whoops is that Steve Mazzagati no it's not if it was Steve the fight would still be going.

Yeah he'd be like get up. Don't be a pussy. Sorry Steve, just joking. That was a horrible one. But I mean that particular style of leg break is just so hard to watch when someone checks you know with a shin kick. Have you done much kickboxing sparring other than what you know with a shin kick have you done much uh kickboxing

sparring other than what you did with those guys and your friends you haven't done really to be honest nothing did it make you think while you were sparring with these guys were you sparring with alexander like maybe i mean this that turned me off completely you know what i mean like starting at the top there yeah i wasn't wasn't even turning him in, mate. I know, but it was like just so out of, you know what I mean? Like, just felt so out of my depth that I was just like, fuck, this is too loud. Does it make you want to learn something? I know that Gary, which is real crazy is that John Donahue actually is a striking coach for Gary, too, which is just, to me, so bananas.

Because I was like, who's been training Gary striking? Because his striking looks pretty sharp. I'm like, did you guys fly someone out to Puerto Rico? I'm like, no, he's so bananas. Because I was like, who's been training Gary's striking? Because his striking looks pretty sharp. I'm like, did you guys fly someone out to Puerto Rico? I'm like, no, it's John. John does it all. John runs MMA class followed by jiu-jitsu class. They just do a lot of like- Oh, shit, I didn't even know that.

Yeah, a lot of MMA drills. He's an MMA coach. Oh, shit. Bro. He's a real wizard. Yeah, man, he is. The attention to detail with everything. Even, again, I didn't know that, but I could still tell that, you know, the way you would study fights and break things down, which is, it works. You know, you get the right philosophies and, you know, the attention to detail can really capitalize on that.

He takes all the guesswork out, right? There's a lot of, like, a lot of in training jiu-jitsu, there's a lot of like, you know, just kind of rolling and learning things and figuring things out and you get tapped with something and then your teammate says you left your leg here and if you do this, you're okay, but if you do that, you're fucked. And you go, oh, okay. But with John, everything is like, it's the process of learning is shortened radically because he cuts out all the nonsense and just gets you to the points that you need to focus on when i watch you guys train under him and i watch him coach and i was like this is very interesting because he's completely eliminated guesswork you know like it doesn't always work like guys are going to lose matches because they're going to face talented grapplers and there's you know in grappling right now i think the especially

the no gigi game, the level of competition is like this who's number one event this weekend. I love these. I love that they have them here in Austin because the level of competition is so high. It's so exciting to watch. But no one does it quite the way John does. It's very interesting.

No one coaches the way that guy does. He's just like an innovator. What's crazy is we'll come to class, right, and he'll just drop some random thing. He'll be like, I was watching the 1988 Greco-Roman wrestling final and I saw this move. Let's test it out. Let's see if it works.

And we'll just run a couple of experiments. And that's like a common thing. Like he's innovating, but he's borrowing stuff from other arts, from another time, long-forgotten things. It's pretty crazy. It's like, damn, when do you have time to watch all this shit he watches tape like every night it's every night it's a good thing because uh when you're looking at things like that like especially there's a lot of people that do good things instinctively you know i mean they don't even know they're doing it but some people are just being in their positions they just do things

so fight study and all that type of stuff because we did a lot of it in the house like i i honestly you you start watching and you you thought process around things i felt like it you know made me understand things even a little bit more i thought i already had a good understanding but watching other people and capitalize or he does this and then and then like you start learning figures oh let's nullify that by doing this. You can go real deep. And that's why watching, again, a lot of people do things that they probably don't even know.

It's just more instinctively, oh, this happened, so he done this. It was the right reaction, and we can capitalize on that just from watching. How much tape do you watch? Say a fight like Holloway. You beat him the first fight, and then you're going to have a rematch with him. Do you watch the first fight? Do you watch his other fights a rematch with him. Do you watch the first fight? Do you watch his other fights? I'll be honest.

I don't watch as much. We've got the coaches that do that. I have Joe Lopez and Eugene and Brad Riddell. They'll watch it and they'll get a lot of the details. But I mean, after doing a lot of it, and I trust them anyway, but I mean, after doing a lot of it in the house and just breaking things down,

I'm like, you know what? I'm going to start paying attention to that. i'm going to start looking at it myself even though obviously i trust them but i mean i can just figure things out myself as well so i think i am going to start doing that but you know i've got full full faith in in the coaching staff and they do a great job you know they they get right into detail yeah you know what i mean and and yeah so then and it works it's interesting there's a there's different schools of thought when it comes to how how you prepare and some schools of thought think you need time off where you don't think about shit where you just go and

play basketball or go fishing or just just relax you need that relaxed time and other people say no no you need your fucking nose to the grindstone, period. Well, the thing is people do their camps. They do their camp and then they stop. I want a break until next camp. So where's your time for learning? Where's your time for evolving? Because when I'm in camp, that whole camp is structured for that fight.

You know what I mean? So I'm doing every session, every drilling session is structured for that fight you know me so I'm doing every session every drilling session is structured for that fight you know I'm obviously a lot of its cardio and getting yourself ready for the fight but then when you're you're not fighting say after the fight like all right just doing a heap of drilling with with Craig or luck with the with with the coaches just doing a heap of striking and just working on other things and get a real understanding or things that yeah don't need in the next fight, but I've got time to evolve and expand the brain.

Like, you know what I mean? So that's where I feel like is the best time. It doesn't mean you have to go and bust your ass. Right. But, I mean, I feel like in between camps is where you evolve. That's where you learn. Yeah, that's where you learn and get as much knowledge as you can. But then once I know I'm fighting someone, all right, eight weeks. That eight weeks before it is purely structured towards that fight.

Now, when you say structured towards the fight, so do you guys have, with city kickboxing, do you have it mapped out in advance where you have, like, here's your eight-week camp. This is what we're going to do on Monday. This is what we're going to do on Tuesday. Everything is completely mapped out. Yep, yep. So everything's there. And again, as I was saying earlier about having, uh, you know, the high sessions and low sessions,

you need to have the, the, you know, the sessions in between, uh, like the, the chill sessions, like where you are going to drill certain things that you're going to need in that fight and that, or a bit of a, you know, pad session or something like that, game planning. So, uh, you know, we do, we have everything from eight weeks structured specifically for the fight. So we even do sessions exactly the time we're going to fight. Obviously, in Australia, it's Sunday. So we don't really have any days off because Sunday is usually our day off. But that's when we fight in Australia.

Right, because it's Saturday night in America. Yes, exactly. So we'll just have the night off. So we'll have three half days in a row. So that's our recovery. So we will train seven days a week, but there's three days where you've got high sessions, but they're going to be nothing the rest of the day.

And then we'll do that. And then on the Sunday. So it's everything specifically for that fight. What time is 9 p.m. Pacific time in Australia, in America? It'd be about lunchtime. So lunchtime you train like you're fighting. 9 p.m. Pacific time in Australia in America about Lunchtime so lunchtime you train like you're fighting. Yeah lunchtime or Pacific time actually might be a bit different but yeah, it'll be a The time of the say the main card would usually be around lunchtime or just after and do you guys do anything to make sure?

That your sleep gets in that rhythm in advance. How do you do for that 100%? So we do especially say a good example was Brazil. So when we went over there, so the time's still going to be the same, but when you're in Brazil, like we had to be up. We made sure that we stayed up till like 2 o'clock in the morning. And then, oh, was that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, yeah, 2 o'clock in the morning because I was going to fight around one o'clock or or you know or two two o'clock so we made sure that we'll wake

till then and then i'll go to sleep after that because we wanted the body clock to be like all right one o'clock in the morning 1 30 2 2 2 a.m that's go time we need to be alert so you were sleeping like that in australia no no because in in Australia the times worked out okay, but in Brazil it wasn't. So the week we were there, we made sure we just stayed to the same sort of pattern as we do in Australia. How long were you there for? Just a week. So once you get there for a week, you go, okay, we're staying up until 2 o'clock in the morning every night. Yes, and I would even do a session that late just so my body was like knowing that.

It's the same as a abu dhabi so when i fought in abu dhabi that we did the exact same thing but because uh we'll go into bed at like seven so we could get up at four in the morning because i was gonna fight like you know we wanted to be up a few hours before we fight yeah so uh yeah so that's why we had a pattern like that i think a lot of people were doing that but that's why you know we and then you know fight night you know i'm trying to sleep in and that's when like you started to come in and woke me up and like i had to do the piss test and i had to skull water and fight night on fight night they woke me up yes i was asleep at seven and they woke up woke me up like 10 11. i was like what the fuck my joe joe lopez my coach he was

absolutely fuming which he had a right to be he's like mate it's fight it's fucking fight night. You're going to come in and wake him up. And then it wasn't that easy. I just pissed. I remember getting up not long before, pissing, went back to sleep. And then I had to go there and then I couldn't piss. So I had to scull water, water load so I could piss so I can go back to sleep. That's ridiculous. Then you're up all night pissing.

You know what I mean? That is fucking ridiculous. Yeah, it was pretty bad. And then because we got melatonin and all all that I don't ever do a fight night but I'm like alright I'll have a melatonin so I can get back to sleep and things like that

but just again why would they do that on fight night that's so dumb that's why Joe Joe was a fumer he was like

are you doing that for you know his opponent and what not like he was fuming but look again you know but I just thought like you know

I think it's like I made it clear that I'm sleeping from 7 till 4 again you know it doesn't you know but i just thought like you know i think it's like i made it clear that i'm sleeping from seven to four like you know i was talking about media everyone knew about it i even changed come test you at 6 30. yeah exactly but i mean like i even told like the the the ufc but maybe they just did it themselves they don't give a well yeah they clearly don't yeah they don't give a look and i i appreciate them i i like how like strict they are with everything and keep doing it yeah but don't wake up, they don't give a fuck. Look, and I appreciate them. I like how strict they are with everything. Keep doing it. Yeah.

But don't wake up someone fucking fight night. No. I couldn't believe that. I was like, are you fucking serious? Joe woke me up. I remember, and he's like, wait, you sad as hell. I'm like, what? He's like, you sad as hell.

I'm like, are you fucking serious? Do we literally have to go through with this right now? Like, I have to get up, scald water. So dumb. That's so dumb. That really, that's inf dumb that that really that's infuriating would you have any specific strategy that you do when you get to a place to avoid jet lag is it melatonin does it like black the windows out well the fight dietician geordie usually has

us on on melatonin but again i won't do that fight no because i feel like sometimes in the morning it can make you that little bit like you know not like you're all right you're there but like just that little bit maybe drowsy yeah so we're like you're still in that sleep sort of pattern but um but yeah like we usually i would you know especially when we come we usually go overnight so i'll try and get as much sleep as i can you know on the plane as hard but i mean i'll make sure i stay awake till the time i want to go to bed in you know i don't care how tired i am i just hold out and then usually i'll get to sleep and by the time i'm ready to wake up i'm hitting my time zone anyway back home and then so i'm i've

got it nailed every time i'm in vegas to be honest my sleeping pattern is on point every time i get it do you adjust your meals like when you eat to just to sort of facilitate that as well? No, well, I think, yeah, it still works out now. I guess I'll just make it, try whatever pattern that I want. I'll just have the breakfast and do all that. As say I'm in Vegas now and I'm going to fight this time, I want to go to sleep this time, and I'll just make sure the padding of the food,

wake up at this time, eat, and still have the lunch. So however I'll do it back home, I just adjust it to how I'll do it here in Vegas. Do they have you on a specific meal plan? So you're eating like every X amount of hours and you're eating, everything's portioned out for you? Fight week you mean? Like period. Period. Yeah.

Or like, yeah, we, we, yeah, we've got a pretty strict schedule. Like we get to make the, when you get the right nutritionist on board, like you're, mate, mate you i'm eating more than i would out of camp almost because we're training so hard so we need you know it's all about performing in the training so we uh you know the performance is keen you're training so much so i eat a lot so the eating isn't too bad to be honest uh during camp i used to struggle with it because i didn't you know know i didn't have guys right helping me with it but now mate like i'm sometimes i look at the meals and I'm like, man, I don't even know if I can eat that. That's too much. But, you know, it's just – yeah, obviously the science behind it is amazing.

It is amazing when you get experts behind your camp and get experts behind your training that a lot of the problems that you were having previously, they get fixed. Like your back issue that you were having with your back would blow out every now and then and then since you've been working with the strength and conditioning guys never happened again well yes bay med uh your performance we talked about last time but yeah they're a bit they've been great and mate even uh when i do get a little bit of a spasm just like what i know now is like mate within a day or two i'm like you know i'm back to grappling 100 like within a day or two you know where before it'd be like two weeks i wouldn't be training and then i'll try and get back into it because i wasn't doing much bang or happen again this will go on like you know

what i mean this would go on the whole time where i'm telling you before in between camps i want to evolve i wouldn't even be able to train because i was constantly getting back issues and then i'll get six weeks to prepare for a fight and that's how it was that was happening for years i was like man what do i got to do here it is it's amazing what real experts can do to help you in that regard yeah just having a full time and keep everyone here every time you get niggly i do this do this and just that you know a lot of the times the stretching and all that that we do is before training so we can train it's not going to heal yeah i'm not going to be flexible because i'm doing this but my body's going to move right for that session right and they're they're just on

point with like that sort of stuff and it helps a lot craig when you compare like the way someone has to prepare when they're a professional grappler like yourself versus someone who's doing all these different disciplines smashed in together in mma do you look at it and go fuck that well i'm just listening to the the professionalism of his camps and stuff and me man I'm eating shit food I'm winging it

you know fuck are you really take away 24-7 this bloke I'm telling you I don't stretch I don't warm up you don't stretch or warm up

no nothing just get straight into it how old are you now 29 yeah when you get to be like 34 you're probably gonna be like you know what you gotta start stretching

I'll just pick an easy round you know if we're gonna go I'll be like that guy's not gonna injure me you know what I mean I'll be like I'll flow it out and'm going to start stretching. I'll just pick an easy round. You know, if we're going to go, I'll be like, that guy's not going to injure me. You know what I mean? I'll be like, I'll flow it out, and by the second round, we'll be good. That's crazy.

You don't warm up at all? Not at all, no. Well, sometimes I'll drill. Surely that's going to change soon, man. I'll drill. I'll use it. You can't do that forever. I know.

Listen, you're talking to a world champion professional. Motherfucker's got everything dialed in. Listen to him. He's your friend. You know, because you don't want to him He's your friend You know Because you don't want To get injured man You know

And then get injured Because you didn't stretch That would be You'd be so mad at yourself Everyone is different This motherfucker's Never even had knee problems Yeah

All the leg locks he does No knee problems Maybe the grappling So much grappling And all that Being in Him fucking upside down Fucking going leg locks

You know Maybe that's got him flexible And flexible enough To not even have to worry about it but you're gonna get old soon mate it's gonna it's gonna fucking change well some people can just take leg locks and take joint like i remember when hoyler gracie fought eddie the second time he fought him eddie put him this this terrible leg lock that he calls the vaporizer oh yeah and eddie had pants on this is what's crazy they made some weird deal where uh you know there was like weird rules where they're trying to figure out what to do and what not to do and uh the the rule was if eddie had pants on hoyler could

grab his pants but the amount of friction you have with pants is that he's like sure grab him go grab him and he destroyed Hoyler's leg and Hoyler would not tap and when you're watching it you look just like oh my god you see him just ripping his knee apart and he and Eddie goes it's it's popping it's popping he goes it's normal it's normal it's fine he's just taking it a healthy bone see if you can find see if you can find Eddie Bravo Vaporize Hoyler Gracie mate even when you watch like the folk style wrestling

and that and then you see the way their legs are positioned and I'm like mate that fucking something's gotta go there like you know what I mean

they're just reaping it there the body weight's on it the leg they're still hanging on while the guys lift you know shoving the leg and you're like

how the fuck is their leg not fucking most of those guys when they retire they have knees and up backs it's like that the the neck the back and the knees no warming up it's coming it's coming looking forward to that or what well you're you're a healthy guy in terms of your mindset though like i've seen you roll before you're you're not a meathead. You roll, you flow. So maybe that helps as well. Like you know when your body is warmed up. But stretching is probably a good idea.

That's probably good. Do you have a routine? What routine do you recommend? I've never stopped stretching. I've been stretching since I was a kid. To me, it's giant. I mean, it's everything. Do you still do the splits?

Oh, yeah. I can do them right now. There you go. I don't even have to warm up. Yeah, I've stayed flexible. But that's just because I always stretch. You know, I just think it's everything. Range of motion is everything.

You know, I started in Taekwondo, and you have to have range of motion if you want to kick. And you want range of motion to kick people in the head. But it's also, like, to prevent injuries. So you can do things with, like, Eddie's got the craziest leg dexterity, and he's got weird flexibility. He doesn't have flexibility like I have, like kicking flexibility, but he's got jiu-jitsu flexibility. The groin, right? Yeah, he can put his legs right behind his head.

No problem at all, both legs behind his head. And he can move his legs like a hand. I have to grab my foot. If I go, you know, I have to grab my foot. If I go into mission control, I have to grab my heel and pull it down. And I can, I'm kind of flexible in that regard, but nothing like him. Like he can do it all without even holding on to his feet. He can just move his legs in certain ways. And he's nothing compared to some of his other guys.

Like Richie Martinez. Oh, yeah, yeah. Very flexible. He's crazy flexible because these guys were all like elite break dancers and they could do like where they would stand up they do handstands and then they would put their legs into a lotus position in a handstand and hop around on the handstand with their legs crisscrossed above their head like what the fuck are you doing how are you doing that so here So here's Hoyler's leg. It's tough to find a good video. This is Robin Black's

breakdown of it. Oh, perfect. Robin is awesome. So there it is. And dude, I was standing there watching this while it's happening and his, like right there, his leg is going sideways. I mean, it is getting fucking destroyed. And he's just tolerating it,

man. It's crazy. If you've ever been put in this position, it horrible it's so bad for you and he's like no fine this is what he's saying you see Hoyler go that's fine that's fine you saw how bad that is man oh he flinched I mean he's in fucking agony I mean if you know how nasty that is and you see Eddie do that to Hoyler and the fact that Hoyler didn't tap, that's a tough man. Eddie looked great for that. He looked in great shape.

Yeah. Put a lot of prep into that one, hey. Well, he realized this is like his last go at it. You know, he was in his 30s, late 30s

and he's like, okay, might be even older than that. Like, when was that? What year was that? In 2014. 14. That was so cool. Metamris for that i remember watching the

first metamorris and when they dropped the trailer to announce that i remember i still remember eddie being like everybody said it was a fluke i was like no fucking way they got this rematch booked yeah i was huge for professional grappling at the time yeah it was crazy and it was huge for for eddie because he didn't just beat him and I mean they made it a draw whatever he dominated every aspect of that fight and he talked through it like when we watched the match like we watched it on the podcast and he talked through it and he goes he goes here he thinks he's like doing better he goes I let him do that so I could adjust and get back to a better position like I'll let him get on top of me and everybody cheered he's like this he didn't do that I did that and then he

moved back to where he was before but with these pants on when he's got pants on and he's attacking legs like you can't just get out of it you know like that was always been that's always been the issue with gi jiu-jitsu i think it's one of the reasons why they've had heel hooks and ibjj like they've kept it out for it's they're allowed now, right? They just allowed them for, yeah, 20, I believe some stage during 2020, they allowed them in no gi. They finally added them, yeah. But not gi? Not gi, no.

Interesting. It goes both ways in the gi because although there's so much friction and you can easily pop a guy's leg, they can also reach back and hold onto your sleeve. So when you're trying to twist, they can hang onto the sleeve and take a bit of a bit of the mobility out of it. But would you think that it's easier to get somebody with the gi pants on? I would say once you've got it, it's easier, but just based on the nature of how people pass in the gi, they can use more distance passing. It might be easier to stay safe. But again,

like you said, once you're in there, the the amount of friction like even when i roll with 10th planet guys and they're wearing key pants it's always a nightmare when they put me in half guard i want that sweat to slip out of there a little bit yeah are you uh do you train in the gear at all i took the gear off and i got to black belt just because uh i wasn't as good in the gear first and foremost and i saw the way the sport was going i saw like uh gee was becoming ultra specialized nogi was becoming ultra specialized and i always say it's better to be good at one than shit at both you know what i mean you should probably put your attention to one of those arts it's always fascinating to me how some people for the longest time thought that to compete in nogi you had to train in the gi i really didn't understand the logic it was it was

very strange yeah crazy i mean people even mma fighters are training the gi i'm didn't understand the logic it was it was very strange yeah crazy i mean people even mma fighters are training the gi i'm like you you can train the gi for fun but that's that's not gonna fucking help you at all it was like saying you have to play ping pong if you want to get good at tennis yeah yeah i agree kind of doing a different thing you could use that uh you could use that energy for so much more useful things really like i mean don't train the gi learn how to wrestle you know but i mean gordon talked about it the last time i had him on the podcast it seems like that argument has kind of gone away the argument used to be that it's better to train in the gi for no gi

but now you don't hear that argument at all anymore like everybody who's an elite no gi grappler essentially trains in the gi or trains with no gi for sure because i think if we go historically and we look at the ADCC champions, they were mostly gi guys, but that's because there was no avenue for no gi competition. So there were very few no gi only guys. So all the champions in the gi,

every second year would just be like, we'll take the gi off, we'll do ADCC. And because though that population was so much bigger, the talent was so much bigger, they could easily translate to no gi. But as nogi grew again thanks to things like meta morris and eddie bravo and even like submission underground obviously who's number one today guys saw an avenue where they could do nogi all the time and then now we

see that really it's like the gi is not really going to help you in nogi at all no well eddie learned from john jock machado right and john joock Machado only has one hand. And because John Jock had one hand, his jiu-jitsu was never based on holding on to collars and sleeves. His jiu-jitsu was more like Greco-Roman underhooks and overhooks and things along those lines. So when he went over to Abu Dhabi, his game immediately transitioned. You watch when he competed against Kyle Uno and Sakurai. He just dominated those guys because he was already using no Gee all the time because of the fact that he was born with one hand. Yeah, beautiful butterfly God switch Yeah, still remember watching John Jacques back in the day being so impressed with how he would play God be very innovative way to play

God yeah He was one of the first guys that went over to Abu Dhabi that was finishing everybody You know and just showing everybody that his jujitsu directly applies. Like, you don't, some guys would come over and they compete in the UFC and they would be these elite jujitsu guys, but you take away their gi and they lost like 50, 60% of their game because they couldn't grab collars and everybody was slippery and then their takedowns weren't that good. So then.

Cage, you could use the cage. Yeah. Cage blocking certain things there. That's a big difference difference it's crazy how far adcc's come from those days to today yeah like the guy that runs a mojassim really like uh he's put a lot of money in to try to make it like a really give it a elite level status in sports and stuff but it's also such a crazy event because obviously like ufc has drug testing and stuff you see some of the most jacked guys coming in and competing in these events There's no drug testing at all right no drugs. I keep trying to get mo

I'm like mo at the rules meeting can you please just stand in front of everyone and be like I would like to announce we Are drug testing this year just to see see the crowd reaction Someone like my knee Imagine if they did that it'd be hilarious right everybody would fall out Yeah, I mean literally like be like 80% right? Yeah. Everybody would fall out. Yeah. I mean, literally, it would be like 80% of the lineup. Some of the dudes are so big. I mean, see, can we get a picture of a guy called Muhammad Ali?

That's his name? Muhammad Ali, but it's spelled different. The last name's spelled A-L-Y. When you see this guy for ADCC, it's like 265 abs, just terrifying- looking human being. I'm not speculating here, but I mean. But you are. Some of the shaping.

Yeah. When you guys train, and I know that there's, you know, John teaches mixed martial arts classes and he teaches grappling classes. Are you doing any strength and conditioning to supplement your grappling? Do you do anything else? I do, but I just do it like – I do it for injury prevention mainly. Look at that guy. Yeah, so this guy was in there. He looks a little saucy.

Crazy stacked. I do strength and conditioning for injury prevention, but obviously if you've seen some of the guys on my team, like we've got Nicky Rod, even Nicky Ryan, Ethan, even Gordon, these guys are doing some crazy bodybuilding workouts and i'm like i'm not sure the sports science behind it but i know they just want to look fucking jacked is that what it is they want to look jacked yeah they love it man they love it nikki rod loves any chance he gets shirts off flexing you know what i mean and i've seen the workouts so they are kind of bodybuilding workouts too nikki rod so when he

takes guys in the gym he's like like, don't worry about technique, just get it up. Just get the weight up. 100 reps. What? I love it though. That's that Josie character. No warm up either?

No warm up? That's a good question. I wonder if the other guys warm up. Gordon's pretty banged up. Gary's obviously pretty banged up. So I would imagine those guys do warm ups. Yeah. Well, how could he not be banged up when you're training seven days a week for years?

Yeah, you're right. I mean, Gary's definitely paid a price. I sometimes wonder if he transitioned to MMA just because it would be easier on the body. Really? Yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah. MMA's easier.

I mean, easier in certain respects, you know what I mean, like on the joints and stuff. Like there's so much load on the body just doing that every day. How banged up is Gary? Like what's banged up about him? His neck's banged up. I believe he had some stem cells in the neck and stuff. Like what's funny is he's had those crazy armbar escapes. And he told me that, like,

you remember the Krung Gracie where he slipped out of the armbar? I'm trying to think he had another match. EBI overtime, even Vinny on the arm, he was able to slip out with ease. But he was telling me that the time he injured out of the armbar. I'm trying to think he had another match. EBI overtime, even Vinny on the arm, he was able to slip out with ease. But he was telling me that the time he injured his elbow the worst was when he was rolling gently with a girl that was visiting the blue basement, and he gave her an armbar, and she just ripped it on him.

All these crazy moments in comp where it almost looks like he's going to let his arm break, and he was telling me that was the one that got him. That's crazy. Some badass girl out there. Got Gary's arm on her wall, the trophy. I wonder if she even knows. She knows now, man.

Yeah, I was going to say, she knows now. Oh, that was me. How goes that? So, but he's doing, is he doing those kind of bodybuilding workouts as well? Gary, no, Gary. Gary, I'm not sure what he does in terms of workouts. I think he does a lot of bodyweight style stuff.

But yeah, the other guys, man, I've done some workouts and watched them do workouts and I'm just sure what he does in terms of workouts I think he does a lot of body weight style stuff but yeah the other guys man I've done some workouts and watched them do workouts and I'm just like man jiu-jitsu is bad enough in the body let alone we throw in bodybuilding style workouts as well like I don't want the wheels to fall off after this career too too soon you know yeah I mean I wonder like how do you find the line between too much and not enough and I would say the same thing to you because like when you obviously your coaching staff is they've got it boiled down to a science right but how do you know when it's too much and not like how do you know when you're being lazy versus how do you know when you're over training when you're going too far and you're not giving your joints and your muscles and everything a chance to recover yeah man, man. Well, I guess it comes down to the people with the knowledge as well.

And what works. You know what I mean? Right now it's working for me, so I'm happy with what we're doing. But, yeah, I guess I just trust the guys. Just trust. Yeah, that's how I am. Well, that's what's great about having such a professional camp with high-level guys and world champions.

I'll be honest and this this shows you like when i'm when i'm overseas uh you know say i'm in a city kickboxing and we're we're training there so we're busting our ass doing that but i don't have my team that i do like bay made a performance where i go do my strength and conditioning and my physio and all that they look after me my body like recovery and all that's way worse in New Zealand because I'm doing the maintenance and even the strength and conditioning and things like that when I'm here, sorry, when I'm in Australia where my body, my recovery, everything, I feel like my body doesn't lock up nowhere near as much as it would when I'm away where I don't really have that treatment.

Where I will, I'll wait until I'm like, can't move i'm gonna go see someone where i'm just constantly you know even the strength and conditioning we do it's more about injury in like injury prevention and obviously getting you're getting you're strong as well but i mean at the same time they can't give me a bodybuilder like you know sort of session when i've got to go bust my ass in the mma training like you know the next hour so it's all you know it's all got to work together so again they they the guys at bay mid they make sure that i'm getting what i need to keep me strong and keep my body moving right but i can still do all my mma my striking my wrestling because if they bust my ass and i'm doing you workouts we're doing, it's just too much. Are you guys in Puerto Rico, do you have a good massage therapist?

Do you have physical therapy there? No, nothing like that, hey, nothing. I have to drive 25 minutes to hit this gym, this hard-body gym. It's like it's from the 80s or something. That's where I go lift weights when I'm down there. That's why I'm trying to push these guys to move to Austin. Mate, you should see him do his workouts, eh? Each rep on his phone.

We're going to recover. We're going to recover in between sets. A lot of people think that weightlifting, that that's how you should do it for strength. It's interesting. There's a lot of different schools of thought. But Pavel Tatsulin, you know, the guy from Russia, the godfather of kettlebells,

he believes that you should never, when you train, you should never go to failure and that you should have long periods of rest in between sets. And I was like, well, how long? He's like, 10 minutes. I said, 10 minutes? Oh, yeah, long-ass fucking workouts.

It's like you're eating in the middle of your workout because you're hungry. Is this like every session? He just thinks strength is a skill and the idea is you should only do that skill when you recovered So like say like think about it this way if and again I'm not necessarily saying that he's correct But I work out this way a lot when I lift weights, when I'm not working with a trainer. My trainer doesn't let me do this kind of shit,

but when I work out by myself, I take these big-ass fucking times. I watch a fight. I watch a whole fight in between sets. So this is when you're doing strength, though, yeah? Yeah. That makes sense. If I'm doing cleans with a heavy kettlebell, like a 90-pound kettlebell or something like that,

if I can do 10, I don't do 10. I do 5, and then I sit it down, and then I wait a long-ass time, and then I do another 5, and then I wait a long-ass time, and then I'll do another 5, and then a long-ass time. And that way I'm getting every rep I'm not exhausted, whereas if I was doing a set of 10, and I could only do like two sets of 10, and then I'm fucking broken down, and the third set I can only get to like 5 or of 10 and then I'm fucking broken down. And the third set, I can only get to like five or six and then I'm like completely exhausted. Well, then I would

have done 26 reps, but I've done 26 reps where the last ones are kind of shitty and my muscles are all blown out. The other way I might do five sets of five. I'm doing 25 reps, but every one of them is like full, clean, clear, like great technique, not exhausted. Getting you stronger. And your muscles don't, they don't feel as tired the next day. Like you're not as beat up. Like going to failure, and many people believe 100% in going to failure, and that that's the only way to do it.

And again, I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a weightlifting expert. But Pavel's, his recommendation is never go to failure and do big breaks in between the sets and stretch out your weightlifting sessions and think of it as a skill. Don't think of it as trying to wear yourself out. Think of it as getting stronger. And another guy who follows that is Firas Al-Habib. Firas Al-Habib believes in that as well. That's his philosophy. It goes with different chains as well, doesn't it?

So that's how we do a lot of our sessions. We've got some that we're just real power-based. So we've got like lactic sessions and more power-based. They change. They're all different chains. So there's some where we've got big rests in between, and I'm just like, fuck, I'm ready for the next rep. But I'm like, no, we've got to wait because we want you to give 100%.

And we do that a lot with our sessions, especially, like you said, your work and strength. You want to get strong and more explosive, so we want every single rep to be 100%. When we go on 80, how are we going to get stronger? The reps go down. You're not doing them properly, or you've got to go lower weight. Well, it's the same as when I noticed, especially this camp,

I recovered better in between my sessions, and I absolutely fucking smashed my high sessions. And it got me fitter because I was able to go harder in them sessions, so I pushed my body to even a higher limit because my body could but then i just noticed that like this is the fittest i've ever been for this last camp that i had and purely because i think it was the rest in between like i honestly felt like my my fitness was on a whole nother level and i was getting through some of these sessions that were like oh fuck where i was just absolutely smashing it the next week like i could do another round of it you

know what i mean it was like a add another round on top of this thing i'm ready to go because the recovery was just on point well it's such a big part of your arsenal too is your ability to push a pace i mean that's uh the halloween fight's a great example of that especially the first one i mean you just your your pace is so ferocious and you can keep that up for 25 minutes where you're never fading yeah so giant man the difference between a guy who fades and a guy who doesn't fade it's so pace is so ferocious and you can keep that up for 25 minutes where you're never fading. It's so giant, man. The difference between a guy who fades and a guy who doesn't fade, it's so big because so many guys, especially when you see guys that are coming up in the ranks, they're kind of contenders, they're doing really well. You'll see them do real well in a fight for the first two rounds and then you'll see a substantial drop off in the third round. And

that seems to be the difference between the really elite guys. And I know a lot of it is energy management for sure, but a lot of it is just that work that you do in the gym to make sure that you can push that crazy pace. Well, like you said, you want to be able to hold that energy. But then you've got sessions like your sparring and all that type of stuff where you can do that. But you need to have sessions that's going to get you ready for a fucking war.

And that's what we do like we do like i don't want to experience an uncomfortable feeling in the fight i'm going to experience it in the fucking camp i'm going to go to literally like i get nervous as i say i get nervous for my my some of my sessions i get more nervous for my sessions than i do for my fight because i know i'm gonna i know i'm getting fucked up in this you know i'm gonna be i'm gonna be very very uncomfortable but i accept that you know what i mean so we in this, you know, I'm going to be, I'm going to be very, very uncomfortable, but I accept that. You know what I mean? So we do sessions where you are going to breaking point, but you know, you just, you know, so

I've learned to just accept that. And then from being in them positions, like, you know, I get tired, but I don't tell myself you're getting tired. It's like, I've fucking done much worse in training. Let's go. So I'm just going to pick up the pace again. So I literally literally we do that in some of these sessions where i'll be honest a lot of a lot of people don't like

there's sessions that we we were doing in our uh sort of like during the the um tough series and that and i don't know if you know they're probably like fuck you know i mean i'm like mate like i do another two or three of these types of sessions i'll just bring one for you guys you know i mean like and i'm like man like a lot of people just won't go to that. Obviously, some of them aren't full-time fighters and whatnot. But again, I want to be, you know, I'm expecting to go out there and, you know, the fight not be that hard. But I'm going to be prepared for however hard it gets. That's the thing, too, about being a part of an elite camp, right?

Like everyone knows that they're going to do that and everyone knows how to do that. You know how to like push literally past your limit. Whereas you see guys where they're the kind of the king of their domain and they run the whole camp and they're kind of in control of everything. It's like, it's very hard to force yourself to go through hell. You know, some people can do it, but you really kind of want a bunch of people going through hell with know some people can do it but you really kind of want a bunch of people going through hell with you and you want someone who's the general you

can't have yeah you can't have yes man and just be like oh yeah i'm just gonna chill you just chill the whole way through you're gonna have guys gonna get it and get that session done when connor fought dustin poirier the last time um one of my friends was watching one of the interviews where uh they were talking about how connor can basically just train himself now and my friend goes the fuck he can that ain't good well look like yeah man i mean i don't know what what caused i mean i think i'm i'm of the belief that it's the low calf kick that was the big issue in that fight his leg gave out and then when his leg gave out he kind of knew he was fucked yeah it looks like you know it definitely definitely was the calf kick but i mean you you can see in a lot of his fights where you're going to say, but again, he's very fast twitch.

Yes. And he's an opportunist. Like, if there's a shot that he's throwing that fucking punch as hard as he can. But you're a fast twitch too. Yeah, look, I guess. That's what's different. It's like you don't get tired like that. That's one thing that I must just have like the, but, I mean, if you look at like when it comes to explosiveness there's guys that are a lot more

explosive than me I feel like I've got this really good balance middle ground yeah this middle ground where I've got that cardio but I've got the explosiveness

you know I don't know what it is maybe obviously the training you know with Joe Lopez the way like we've been training

he's always put me in like these sort of positions as I said like you know being uncomfortable and all that you're pushing the pace and all that

so I've always had that anyway but I mean I feel like there's a lot of things for me that that made it work a lot of different things obviously there's a lot that comes into training and all that but even maybe my build or maybe just through life the way I did things and you know maybe that's I built that type of cardio or you know fast which I don't know but there's a lot of things that come into play that make me be able to do what I do. Do you think part of it has to do with the rugby background because there's so much running involved in rugby? Yeah, I think so. Could it be for cardio? Could it have been a benefit?

Maybe, again, it's headspace as well. I'm the type of guy that, while I'm, you know, I can chill. Like when you're playing rugby league, you can go take a run and then Just chill right? I don't fucking chill. I'm like I'm the type of guy if we're in our 10-meter line Give me the fucking ball. I'm gonna run it someone else runs it. Give me the fucking ball again You know, I mean like that's just how I am. That's how I've always been Where I just feel like you know, some people oh, yeah, I'll just chill for a bit. I just wouldn't do that. Mmm interesting now when you see a guy who uh does get tired early

like a guy who's real fast twitching explosive get tired early do you do you ever think like why like is that is is it just a cardio issue like they haven't pushed themselves hard enough do you think it's an energy management issue is it a combination of things maybe combination thing but i mean being in that like again if you're always trying to be in a position where you're Do you think it's an energy management issue? Is it a combination of things? Maybe a combination of things. But, I mean, being in that, like, again, if you're always trying to be in a position where you're comfortable and all that type of stuff, as soon as it gets uncomfortable, you're not thinking right, you're struggling, you're like, oh, no, like you're starting to doubt yourself, all these, you know.

But, again, that's why we put ourselves in that sort of position. But I notice it, like especially when you're fighting or even sparring. Everyone's fucking good for the first minute. They're on point. They're eager. You can't slip up for a second because they're ready to pull the trigger. One minute goes by. Next minute, they're looking for a, give me a second to reset.

I ain't giving you fucking shit. I'm in your face. That's it. You just see them crumble. But early, I can't do that. I have to wear them out and then be on them and then you just start to see like their reactions from the first minute to even the second completely different yeah and just be like thank you doesn't it seem like that should be doctrine

like that should be understood in every camp like i wish i didn't fucking say it maybe you can say it and i don't think it matters because I think it's a will issue like some people just don't have the will to push themselves in that way or maybe they don't think they have to or maybe they're deluding themselves and they think they're pushing themselves harder than they really are

like maybe like if someone like Connor came and trained with you and saw how you prepare maybe you'd be like oh fuck like obviously the guy's super fucking talented with you and saw how you prepare, maybe you'd be like, oh, fuck. Like, obviously, the guy's super fucking talented.

Obviously, he rises to the occasion. Obviously, he handles pressure as good as anybody alive. Yeah. But there have been moments in his fights where he's faded and not faded like a world champion, faded like a guy who's got a flaw, like you've got a hole in this game. Like, you would expect world championship caliber fighters to be at the elite of the elite. Their energy management's on point. Everything's on point.

Cardio's on point. The training camp's on point. Unless there's an injury and there's some sort of a, you know, a pre-existing problem, they shouldn't have those energy management issues.

Yeah, well, maybe even a, again, he's a fast twitch and he goes for the kill. Yeah, he does. So if you, you know, you throw a jab and he sees, again, he's fast twitch and he goes for the kill. Yeah, he does. So if you throw a jab and he sees an opening,

he's got a good eye, he's going to fucking pull that trigger. And, you know, when you know you've got a hard workout, maybe I'm not pulling the trigger. When I'm sparring,

I'm not pulling the trigger because I don't want to knock out my trainer partner. But, I mean, once I'm fighting, I am literally throwing everything in this fucking punch. Yeah.

And the opportunity, like, you know, again, I everything in this fucking punch yeah and the opportunity like you know again i'm in his face because he's the type of fight he gets in your face makes you panic punch and just capitalizes every time so he wants to be there in the heat you know he wants to be in the fire because he knows people are going to make bad decisions and he and he capitalizes on it but i mean again that's that's putting himself in a position where he needs to go a lot harder especially when he's trying to go for the kill at the same time. Maybe there's a balance that he needs to, I don't know what it is. But again, going back when we're talking about adversities in the gym and all that type of stuff, that's why I love this sport so much.

I feel like there's a lot of gyms, obviously, that's just how they are. It goes discipline and all that, like all these great life skills that we take out of it, you know what I mean? And the adversities that you do in our gym and what i've always done with uh freestyle and even city kickboxing like i feel like that just helps when you know you're under the pressure outside of the you know outside of mma or whatever like you just deal with things a lot better just because again you're you've been in uncomfortable positions and you've had to adapt and and be able to move forward and look forward.

And, you know, again, you see that with a lot of people that, you know, they're good under pressure and all that type of stuff. And then you get people that aren't and can't. That's really one of the best things about martial arts as it applies to life is that it makes regular life easy. You know, even just jujitsu, you know, without the kickboxing and the striking and all that stuff just the struggle of jujitsu for the most part is so much more difficult than the struggle of everyday life it makes everyday life seem kind of relaxing like problems seem minuscule in comparison to i'm sure like having gordon ryan on your back yeah for sure i mean that's the way we train for the rolling portion is we'll basically do 60 minutes straight

with no rest, but we always do bad positions first. So your first round of the day is under mount. Then we'll go turtle, close guard, potentially even start on an armbar for that fourth round. So in terms of like, we can't hide. Like when I used to train in Australia

and I was one of the better guys in the gym, I would never be in bad positions. And then in competition, if someone put me there, I'd freak out. I'd either get out and be tired or I wouldn't get out. And then training with John, training with these guys, I'd be forced to do bad positions every day. So then because we're doing back-to-back-to-back rounds, you can't use explosiveness to get out. You have to use efficient movement. So it forced me to really become an expert at how to stay calm in those bad positions and use technique to get out. You have to use efficient movement. So it forced me to really become an expert at how to stay calm in those bad positions

and use technique to get out. Because, again, what's the use of getting out if you've got no energy afterwards? Yeah, that seems to be one of the most important things about jiu-jitsu is your defense. And it's one of the things that people neglect. And one of the things that Hickson always emphasized, like Hickson, who's always considered one of the greatest of all time if not the greatest when you talk to him he would always say it's all about defense like he's he goes in any position i remember talking to him about this he goes i am safe he goes if he has my back i'm safe if i'm mounted i'm safe he goes i'm always safe and then it's always he's like we

start from a neutral position and then i'll never forget this it was kind of spooky listen cuz you know you know how good Hickson is I can listen to like a guy who was just dominant over everyone that he competed against and all the people he trained with he goes I move from zero to number one and when I go from number one I'm going to two and I'm not going back to one and I'm going to checkmate and the way he's explaining it like super intense about his like his philosophy about Just having perfect position and perfect technique and his thing was always have excellent defense You could never just rely only on offense and we've all seen guys like that that have this fantastic

Offense, but then they get stuck in a bad situation We've all seen guys like that that have this fantastic offense, but then they get stuck in a bad situation. You see them flail and spaz and explode and they get tired and then they wind up getting caught. Well, good defense gives you the confidence to be more offensive. It's probably like with an MMA. If you know if that guy takes you down, the fight's over, you're probably going to be pretty nervous and not be as offensive.

Right. Whereas if you know you're going to get back up if he puts you down probably gives you more ability and confidence in your striking it makes it opens up strikes for uh grapplers you know in a way that like grab like one of the great examples is kevin randleman when he fought merco crokop because merco crokop at the time was and still is one of the most legendary strikers to ever compete in mma just terrifying kickboxer but randleman had him so scared of the takedown he faked a shot and hit him with left hook and knocked him out you know dropped him and then finished him off heavy knockout too yeah heavy well randall man was a fucking powerhouse man he was he also had the worst

staph infection i've ever seen in my life. The hole here. Oh, mate, that was bad. Remember that? It was literally like he had an armpit on the side of his body where you could look in and see all the muscles. You could see all the tissue, everything. Horrible. Staph's no joke. That's the worst part of this sport. I've had some decent holes in me from staph, to be honest.

I remember having one. It was like a big hole in my arm. I've had some nasty ones as well. Not like that. Not like a random one. You guys use defense soap? Do you use that stuff? I should. You don't have? Dude, I will had some nasty ones as well Not like that Not like a You guys use defense soap? Do you use that stuff? I should

You don't have? Dude I will bring some Cause Guy Sacco Sent some to my house The other day He got way more than I need You want some too?

Yeah that'll be good You gonna be at the matches? Oh no We're leaving tonight Oh you leave I tried to convince him to stay But we couldn't do it I'll bring you

I'll bring you a box of it Cause he gives me a lot of it Cause he's the nicest guy ever. But that stuff is the shit because it's all like natural tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil, and it's good for your skin. It doesn't kill anything. It just gives you a healthy environment for the skin, so it's not like antibacterial where it kills all the good bacteria.

You can only use it for a certain amount of time because it's going to fuck you up. It smells good. It's good shit for you only use it for a certain amount of time it smells good it's good shit for you but it's like that and probiotics, probiotics are really important, acidophilus giving your body healthy bacteria things like kombucha all those things, do you fuck around with any of that stuff?

I'm pretty fucking lazy to be honest I should get onto it when a guy trains seven days a week is when week He's one of the Literally You're one of the top three Best grapplers on planet earth And you say how lazy you are

It's kind of hilarious He's fucking in and out burger Every fucking meal Yeah Takeaway food It's tempting yeah How come Do you think that

How much better do you think You'd be If you didn't I asked the same question To Gary back in the day Cause Gary told me When he was on my podcast Years ago, he had a similarly shitty diet. I mean, it's not terrible.

But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the bridge would be, how much better I would be. I feel like quite often when I lose, it's never because they're stronger, faster, or in better fitness. It's usually I'm just like, no, I fucked up with this particular move. in better fitness it's usually i'm just like no i fucked up with this particular move so i think the fact that i focus on the technique probably distracts me from other reasons that i could be losing particular matches so yeah so your body is in good enough shape so you could execute it's just mistakes yeah even now like i'm pretty lazy like when i take a match i'm just like i don't even care what weight division it is like i'd rather face someone bigger than cut weight

i'm just like i'd rather avoid cutting weight. I'll cut weight for ADCC, but other than that, like, I just, I'm just like, just give me a bigger guy. I'd rather a bigger guy than starve myself. Well, I guess, well, it makes sense when it doesn't come down to striking. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a luxury grapplers have.

Yeah, when you look at a guy like Francis Ngannou, you're like, I think I can lose some weight. Yeah. I think I can definitely lose some weight. Fuck away from that guy. We'll see how he goes because he had me cooking meals for him the last five weeks. He was cooking healthy, cooking healthy meals. Yeah, you can cook, man.

I watched some of your videos. You're a real cook. I love cooking. Yeah, we had a couple of hits that they liked, so I just kept those on repeat almost every week. But I was even on the show cooking for everyone and that cooking good. You're going to have to wait and see. But I love my barbecue. I love my steaks and that as well.

One thing I do want to get some of the meats you guys have over here, elk. We don't have that back home. But in New Zealand, there's a lot of wild stag and a lot of wild animals. They've got elks over there too, don't they? Yes, they do. You can get farmed elks over there too, don't they? Yes, they do. You can get it there. Like farmed elks over there? Yeah, but you should go get it yourself.

Yeah, that's 100%. But that's what I like to do. Kangaroo. Can you eat some kangaroo? Hey. Kangaroo meat's pretty healthy too, right? It is, yeah. High in protein.

I've never had kangaroo, but I've had ostrich. Really? Yeah. There's a place called Fuddruckers, a cheeseburger place. Me and Eddie Bravo, we used to lift weights at 24 Hour Fitness, and we'd go get Fuddrucker ostrich really yeah there's a place called fudruckers a cheeseburger place and we would me and eddie bravo we still lift weights at 24 hour fitness and we go get fudrucker ostrich burgers like the kangaroo bangers are good good man kangaroo kangaroo's good kangaroo sausages kangaroo bangers we call yeah oh kangaroo bangers yeah you could probably get kangaroo here

right i reckon you could people we've got that many of them in australia there's a lot yeah it seems like there's a lot i've watched a video once of like looked like thousands of them running across a field it's crazy mate like you go you start going out out west and like just every 10 15 meters on the side of the road like obviously i mean being hit by cars like there's a lot of damage to cars deaths and everything from from just driving on roads and kangaroos. A lot. And don't they have people go out and try to lower the numbers? People hired by the country?

And that's with a lot of animals in Australia. Koalas too, right? They're called koalas? I think so. I don't think so. Oh, shit. I didn't know about that. Those little sweeties? I think so, yeah. I don't think so. Koalas? I hope not. I don't think so. Surely. Oh, shit. I didn't know about that. Those little sweeties?

I think so, yeah. I don't think so. Koalas? I hope not. I think koalas are very limited because they have an extremely limited diet. I think they only eat eucalyptus. I think that's all they eat. Yeah, yeah.

Don't they have like a hepatitis? Chlamydia. Chlamydia, sorry. Chlamydia, yeah. How does people find that out? But maybe that's why they're keeping numbers down for that. Found out the hard way.

Yeah, I guess so. I think they only eat, koalas only eat eucalyptus. Eucalyptus, yeah. That's why they hang around. They're always high. Their eyes are just glassy and red as fuck, yeah.

Really? Eucalyptus gets you high? I think so. That's what I've been told. We're just spreading a lot of misinformation on this show today. That makes some crazy noises, koalas. I think so. That's what I've been told. We're just spreading a lot of misinformation on this show. That makes some crazy noises, koalas.

I think so though. Yeah, it sounds like a demon or something. Hey, it's actually a scary noise. Oh really? If you're out in the woods. This is mainly. Oh, mainly? What else do they eat?

Pussy? Hey. Well, chlamydia, dirty pussy. So, but I don't think they call them though. It also says they're extremely picky with their food, but will occasionally branch out, maybe if they can't find any more eucalyptus. Yeah, like they just hang out in eucalyptus trees.

That's pretty much it. That's why I'm surprised they don't eat anything else. I don't think they're... They're not overpopulated, though. I don't think they would call them. Oh, so that's what I was looking at before that. They did. Fucking hell, really?

Like 100 years years ago though Alright I'm a bit late on that But I mean 800,000 were killed To send for the United States Oh my god That's nuts Colling was banned

In New South Wales South Australia And Victoria In the early 1900s But continued until 1927 in Queensland Was eventually banned After a massive

Public backlash Have you heard about The emu war The Australian military Went to war with emus Yes I did hear that We lost was eventually banned after a massive public backlash. Have you heard about the emu war? The Australian military went to war with emus? Yes, I did hear that. We lost. My friend Monty Franklin has a fucking great bit about it.

He's Australian, and he's got a great stand-up comedy bit about the emu war. I told John Danaher about that, and he looked at me for probably 30 seconds silent before he went straight to Google. Then he came back in the next day an expert on the emu war knew every single fucking detail about it what is the deal in the emu war why why did they have to go to war with emus there were so many of them i think that yeah i think they were fucking up some crops somewhere so they send uh send the military out there but they couldn't there's a lot of animals in my in australia like you go out like you go

west than that well where we are and they're just everywhere yeah well the thing about it is you have to get within you know what 500 yards and they're birds like good luck once they realize you're shooting them they're gonna get the fuck out of there and then you're chasing them so how are you chasing them you're chasing them by plane you're chasing them on a truck like are you gonna shoot individual bullets at individual birds like that's a long project. This is not like a simple, easy-to-do project. It's not like buffalo that just stand there.

The thing about when they extirpated buffalo from the plains, buffalo would just stand there. They would drop around each other like boom. One would fall down, the other ones would just keep eating. They're like, what the fuck's going on? They didn't know what was happening.

I would imagine those emu, they get hip to that shit pretty quick. Very quick, yeah. Can you eat emus? Yeah, yeah, I believe so. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we do. They have the coat of arms as well, the kangaroo and emu. That's true. People get so angry when you tell them you eat kangaroo.

Really? Yeah, they don't like it because I guess it's such a sweet-looking animal. But they're vicious, choke each other and stuff and stuff oh yeah they and they get jacked too some of them like my jack yeah they like literally have they got biceps and shit like they got a chest they come out and they staunch you like this like literally have you seen the one there's one that you're going to like i think he's a window like it comes up to a house uh-huh and they're on the other side of window so the kangaroo can't see him but he's seeing himself in the in the window and he starts shaping up just like shoulder charge and I like this

I want you wanna fucking go like that Huge I mean huge like the big Reds. Yeah, big red kangaroos massive. Well, they kill people right? Well, maybe they Supposedly get you like a tight clinch and I stand on their tail get their both legs and just smash your guts But sometimes they got big claws I've been told they can rip your – I've heard that too. They've got that little chug too. You see them choke each other out.

See them choke that dog out? I've seen that. And the guy fights him? If you had to go out – Fucking Australia. You've got to arm drag a kangaroo, right? I would think arm drag is the move. They probably have no idea what to do if you get to their back.

Yeah, I think – They've got that tail. The like could stop you from passing you hang on to the tail i feel like you get them be tough to leg lock that's for sure very tough to leg lock but i feel like they would have no idea you get one good arm drag you get their back and they're gonna fucking flop around and try to figure out this would be a good question for john if you ask him any about any battle between animals he would just go yeah anytime i want training to get into detail start studying their body shapes and you know what is the deal with the big giant knives that he gives you guys when

you get your black belt i don't know to be honest but uh it is very cool usually gives us a knife if it's um if we've had a good performance or something because he sort of sees us as the blade and uh he's sharpening us and that's sort of like a metaphor for that but yeah it's very interesting yeah how many knives you have i think i've got three i've only got three so obviously some of the boys have got a lot more gordon's probably got an arsenal at home it's uh it's got to be a trip to train with a guy like that who's uh you know gordon's only 25 years old and he's already known as the greatest ground fighter of all time like if you if you ask people who's the greatest jiu-jitsu practitioner ever most people today that are in the know will say gordon ryan which is crazy because he's 25 years old but if you look at his accomplishments

guy hasn't lost in 39 fights. Like who the fuck can say that in grappling? That's never happened. Yeah, very, very crazy. I mean, he just took it to another level of dominance. There's been guys that have been dominant, like obviously Hodja Gracie and stuff, but for the most part, a lot of the dominant grapplers didn't finish everyone, and he just goes out and just finishes people.

But it's good for my confidence because even if I have a bad day in the gym with him, I'm like, well, it can't get any worse. You're literally rolling with the goat. Yeah, no one's going to do that to me. Well, I hope. Yeah. Well, you hope. I had my moments.

Now, what is it like when you brought a guy like him in? What were you thinking bringing him in for camp? Oh, man, like a good banter as well. Obviously, knowledge, you know what I mean? We knew that. And I've trained with him a few times. But, but i mean like we just knew he was over here as well so uh you know we hit him up you know we just thought you know be good to have him on the show because again like you know we get along and the type of crowd that our crew we have as good banter

and like you know we like a shit stirring each other and all that we knew he would fit well and he did so it was great you know really was but i mean training and that was good as well and like i'm glad i did that because just through the start like man i'll tell you right now i was averaging he was submitting me uh you know uh once a minute that would be my average you know what i mean if i did 10 minute round i was doing i was getting submitted 10 times once a minute honestly yeah and And I'll be like, fuck, and now we're getting them numbers lower. So it's all right. So thank you. What are you, between 195 and 200?

And you walk around at like 160s? Yeah, 167 right now. But yeah, when I first started, they're tough, and that was about 165. Your game is so pressure and volume and a lot of striking. But one of the things that you showed in the hallway fight is you can mix it up and grapple too. When you're approaching a fight and you have this real wide array of skills, how do you decide? Do you do based on strategy and game plan before the fight how to approach this specific fighter or do you flow right a lot of

its flow obviously the game plan goes a lot a long way but I mean you need to play what's in front of you as well like we've that last fight you had max who changed his whole fucking and he's been successful for a long time in this certain style. And then he went to, we call him Muay Thai Max. He went Muay Thai Max in the last fight, which we just did not expect him to change his whole game. More upright, legs are closer together, and didn't care too much about getting out,

making you miss and then countering. It was more just, I'm going to let you run. We did not expect that at all. So you got to make it you've got to make adjustments mid-fight as well but i mean like we've uh it's funny because uh you know you talk about people being well-rounded and all that and you know that goes so far yeah people can wrestle grapple and the way you put it all together using the right tool at the right right time you know right tool for the right job uh and then again just being able to use certain tools, even knowing that that tool ain't going to work, but I'm going to get him thinking about that tool and I'm going to use this

tool and just constantly mixing it up. So if I don't get them takedowns, I'm not too fast because that's still a piece of the puzzle he's trying to figure out or he's committing to stopping that takedown. Once he's committed, I capitalize somewhere else. But that's somewhere where I feel like I could always take it. Before, if you look at five fights ago, six fights ago, everyone just thought I was a wrestler grappler. Now people just think I'm just a striker.

From my last few fights, they just look at me as a striker. But it just shows you where, uh you know we did a lot more you know training with city kickboxing and that so i've always had that wrestling background and like you know that gritty you know hard hard working sort of mentality and like you know we knew we knew a lot about going to city and then to find details we had details on the wall and all that type of stuff but going over there and they have like you know just some you know attention to detail with striking uh and you just you've seen it in my last fights where people don't even know i got like wrestling or grappler now i'm up for craig jones he has done a lot better i'm glad i don't need to grapple him i

don't need to grapple him anymore so i'm just going to talk heaps i want to see him and ortega after the fight actually have a grappling match because people obviously ride very very high on ortega's grappling but i think yeah very underrated ride very, very high on Ortega's grappling, but I think, yeah, very underrated. I would love to see it. Ortega's very good on the ground. His submissions are—there's something about his squeeze that's really phenomenal. Like when he caught Cub Swanson, he almost got him at the end of the first round. I think it was the first round that he got him in the second.

But at the end of whatever the round it was, he caught him in a darts, had it fully locked up, and it looked like he was going out. And then the buzzer rang. And then he caught him in a guillotine in the second round. And it's just the details, the way he cinches it up. And it's so tight and it's so precise. And you can see his adjustments, like when it's not that, like even when he had, was it, was it cub?

Like when he used the cage, even like kicked off the cage, it hopped up a little bit and got even more over the neck and then really sunk it. You know what I mean? So again, he knows how to, he knows where to put the head. He knows how to get that head down

and capitalize on that. I was surprised though when he fought Max that he didn't get it to the ground or make substantial attempts to get it to the ground. I was surprised. I was surprised

that he decided to fight a stand-up fight with him. Well, he's the type of guy where he said it himself. He goes, I don't need to wrestle. Someone wants to take me down, I'm going to fuck them up with my jiu-jitsu. It's a pretty bad mentality.

What if you need to, as you did in that fight, need to get it to the ground? Right. You know what I mean? The wrestling goes a long way. There's a lot of control in wrestling, defensively and offensively. So having that tool goes a long way yeah I don't think you can have any holes in your game at the elite level anymore it's not there's unless I mean even if you're a great striker what if

you get clipped you know anything can happen a hundred percent and you got it you got to understand that you know I mean I even though you know you don't want to see talk yourself up you don't be cocky but you know I'm definitely comfortable but a lot of these opponents that I though, you know, you don't want to talk yourself up, you don't want to be cocky, but, you know, I'm definitely confident. But a lot of these opponents that I see, like, you know, even with this next fighter, there's a lot of different challenges that I need to be aware of, but I still feel like it's just more about, you know, him landing a certain shot or him maybe getting a submission. And, you know, so it's just about nullifying that.

But, you know, I just feel like, you know, without any disrespect to him, I just feel like that's, you know i just feel like you know without any disrespect to him i just feel like that's that's you know his go-to and that yeah but i mean again we're in mma where that could definitely happen but you know i'm pretty defensively sound and working with uh with him now i feel like uh yeah my jiu-jitsu is at a whole nother level especially defensively when you had matches with a guy like holloway you know like you've had these two epic fights with Max Holloway and you have two victories over him but real close fights how important is that for a guy like you to have a foil like that to have a guy that is your rival like Muhammad Ali had Joe Frazier yeah you know there's these these epic rivalries where you have more than one fight together,

and they're just these crazy close fights. Ten rounds. Yeah, man, it's crazy. But I think, obviously, it's like someone I was talking to when they talk about having teams. You can go, and then you've got two teams, and then just because of the jersey you're wearing, you're going to have millions of people hate you

and pick on absolutely everything you do. So that's always going to happen. so a lot of the attention is just purely they're either a max holloway fan or or alex fan but i mean you could be both yeah or be both exactly but i mean that what people a lot of people are missing is what what happened in in that cage man like there was some very very high level it was a high level chess match there was a even in the first fight and the second fight, the adjustments we made, well, he made in between, the adjustments I made mid-fight, even in the first fight,

like there was, you know, if I go into detail, there was times where, you know, he wanted to just catch me. Every time I threw a kick or something, he just wanted to get me and just come forward. He's a volume fighter. So once he did that, I was just making him run into things because I knew he was going to come in. Then he realized, oh, he's trying to catch me coming in.

So I'm going to pretend to go in and then catch him after he tries to catch me coming in. And then I caught on to that. Then I end up, you know what I mean? So it was like, it was this little tiny adjustments. This was happening. Like, I could show you sequences. Oh, this is where this happened. And little chess matches, people are going to miss, you know what I mean?

And obviously, I can't give away too much of what was going on in there, but there were so many things that we had to just – well, a lot of it was the fact that I just kept changing things up as well to make it harder for him to get a read on me. But, you know, but again, there was a chess match where he would make, you know, great little adjustments and it would work and then I'll catch on to that and then I'll change it up and he would do that. And, you know what I mean?

But people are going to miss that because they're just going to be like you're not going to carry on how they do which which i get you know and i respect people yeah for for obviously being that emotional about it you know that's because that's what we write off we want that but mate there was a 10 rounds and again you you talk about it and i like obviously you know you're going to get people you know say whatever they want. That's fine. But, I mean, I think they're just missing the point of how competitive. Yeah, it was very competitive even though, you know, I've got the two wins.

But it just, you know, the chess match we're having in there, I just think is missed by too many people. Yeah, I think you're probably right. The people that don't appreciate it just think it's a great fight. But the people that appreciate it and have seen a lot of fights and understand the high-level aspects of it were like, wow, this is pretty special. I felt like it was pretty special. And I think it's just so impressive that you have these two victories over Max when you look at how Max has performed with everybody else in the division.

Like the last fight with Calvin Cater, who is a fucking beast. And Max just lit him on fire. That was, in my opinion, one of the most impressive performances I've ever seen. It was a great performance. So again, I'm going to give credit when credit's due. No, you didn't. He looked great. He did.

Even I was like, wow. You know what I mean? I said that. But then obviously afterwards, I go, yeah, you're hitting them numbers on these guys, but you ain't hitting them numbers when I'm in front of you. But again, you're obviously going to say that and people aren't going to be happy with that. But at the same time, again, you know what I mean? He's a smart dude.

He's got a high fight IQ. You have certain habits. Their team's going to pick up on it and Max is going to pick up on it. You exit a certain way and that's the only exit. He's going to fucking piece on it and max is going to pick up on it you exit a certain way and that's the only exit he's going to piece you up if you keep doing that and again like you know there was and i know no disrespect to to cater but there were certain things that you know max caught on and just made him pay he was being first and then stayed on him he was the first to get going as soon as he got him where he knew he was going to direct him,

just kept going. But the way he even mixed that up, I don't think I've ever seen him mix kicks, knees, so much. After our fights, I feel like especially from the first to the second, his tool was always his jab, his hands, and the volume fight. The second one, obviously, he used so many different tools. And this fight, you've seen him just, the volume was there,

the way he just mixed up all the tools. So again again i'm going to give him a lot of credit because the kid can fight you know what i mean fight his ass off he takes a shot we're going to meet again but obviously i've got jobs jobs to do and it's going to be a big fight you know and people are going to really really want to watch that one so but right now obviously i've got or take it to worry about and watch this season watch everyone can watch me uh stir him up and give him what is the pressure like of hanging out with a guy that you're gonna fight for five weeks you're just hanging out day in day out seeing each other all the time well we talk about uh i was talking about how i adjust and adapt to things that in front of me even in the fight i'm just like that 24 7. you know i mean i'm the type of guy that whatever i'm doing on that's it i'm me

you know i forget i'm a ufc champ i forget i'm a i'm even a fighter half the time you know I mean I'm the type of guy that whatever I'm doing that's it I'm me you know I forget I'm a fucking UFC champ I forget I'm even a fighter half the time you know because once I'm home I'm daddy that's it and that's all you know

but that's how I am but I went in there and I just knew I want a reality TV show he's going to be there whatever but it was funny because again

you're trying to get reads on him and things like that but again I just think he's fucking awkward he's an awkward dude what do you reckon what'd you get out of it yeah that's for sure he definitely wasn't a fan of me by the end of the show really he almost got fired for one of the pranks i played on him but we weren't allowed

to uh what was it you almost got fired or he almost got almost got fired for it which one was that really was that that was the code we had to take five covert tests a week so obviously there's pranks on the show this won't make the uh tv anyway, but I did pretend to put his COVID test on my ass. The mouth, the mouth. It was a dream. It didn't really happen, but. So we're pretending to piss on his, like, you know, his signs and all that.

We've got photos of us, like, just throwing up. Again, a bit of a laugh, you know, a bit of banter, but we know how he carries on. There was a photo that he put. You put it up, didn't you? Of the keys. Yeah, we pretended to take his car. Pretending we just had a photo that he put um you put it up didn't you of the keys yeah we pretended to take his car pretend he pretended we just had a photo of the keys and uh supposedly he had the

fucking the shits and like he was like oh i'll fucking fight craig i'm like i'm in the photo too why aren't you saying you'll fucking fight me yeah he's like if he touches the car or we'll fight him but i mean again like yeah whether whether he was just like you know going along with it or whatever it was but or he's just easily triggered, I don't know. So we started realizing that, so we just started playing on that a fair bit. Hey, knowing that he's easily triggered, there might be a route to this next fight as well. What happened with the COVID test swab?

Like you took a photo pretending that you were sticking up your ass? Can we get this up? Yeah, yeah, airdrop it to Jamie. Get the photo of us pissing as well. swab like you took a photo pretending that you're sticking up can we get this up yeah yeah um air drop it to jamie get the get the photo of us pissing as well do you got the one of this you guys are grown men get the photo of us pissing yeah and the thing with me with the thing up my ass yeah get that mac pro jamie yep uh no mbp oh oh there it is something happened uh wrong i can't but again just have a bit of a laugh you know i mean we will uh that one it's on the wrong computer so it's the other one i got this

one i mean it's pretty light-hearted you know like i wouldn't really stick his oral covid swab up my ass how could you even get a hold of it i mean isn't that stuff controlled that's what i understand like where the fuck is the nurse oh i just I just waited until the nurse had to go to the bathroom, you know? Swab. There it goes. Oh, my God. A little cheeky smirk, too, eh? They actually almost fired me for this one, so I probably crossed the line a little too much.

But hey, remember, this is a different swab just in case you do still get in trouble. Yeah, this is fake, ladies and gentlemen. It's just a joke. Allegedly. It might have been a flavored test. You never know. LOL. So what did they say to you?

Well, I mean, I did have some ideas for some COVID pranks, because obviously we're trying to get them. But they did tell me, because they spent so much money on COVID testing, they were like, that's a line we can't cross. But I just couldn't resist. But Craig did it anyway. It was just sitting. By the way, that's probably not on the film that

test was sitting in the same section yeah I get it listen makes sense to me you gotta do what you gotta do but it's part of the fun of the show right it's fucking with everybody pranks and I mean you see it's through each other and and the more conflict there is the better the ratings are the better the show does Better it is for everybody when you guys have a big fight. Mm-hmm I mean, it's financially that's like it's hard because a lot of people think of martial arts They think of honor and respect and commitment and discipline and all that which is all real but this is a business and it's an entertainment business and

One of the reasons why Conor McGregor's worth a half a billion dollars is because that motherfucker knows how to stir some shit and that fight the fight with jose aldo where they went on this world tour for months at a time by the end of that tour he was he had a whole apartment complex under jose aldo's skin i mean he wasn't just under his skin he had fucking fucking camped out, sewer lines, electrical. He was like, I mean, he lived there. He was in Jose's hell, in his head. And it factored in the fight because Aldo was uncharacteristically reckless.

Like, he just charged forward, looking to land that left hook and got clipped with that straight left on the way. And you even see, like, the way he was trying to draw that out of him too. So you've got to give credit to Conor because, again, he lands all these shots, but he sets them up. He puts them under the pump.

Well, you see when he's warming up? See when he's warming up and he's showing the exact technique he's going to use? In the warm-up, in the locker room before the fight, he's mimicking Aldo and he's mimicking him, and he's mimicking dropping a left hand on him and then he went out and started knowing that he's going to put that pressure get in his face and get the big reaction and capitalize on it and like you said he pictured it boom yeah exactly what he went like amazing yeah it was good um do you you anticipate staying

at 45 for the remainder of your career uh look, I can see myself going to lightweight, but again, I want to just, you know, I want to stay in the division and win the next couple of fights and cement myself as the, you know, as the man of the goat of the featherweight division and all that type of stuff. I mean, there's going to be a time where, you know,

I'm going to be waiting to find the next number one contender and things like that, and I want to move up. But, you know, right now is not the time. Again, I'll wait. I've still got a fair bit to work on. Obviously, you've got fights that you've got to do anyway. And obviously, build your brand and all that type of stuff. Build your stocks, and then they'll want that fight.

So I don't think that's too far away. Yeah, there's so much in your division already as it is and as long as you're not having a hard time it's there's a big gap 55 and 45 10 pounds a lot it really is and it's one of the reasons why i think boxing has a better system in terms of like weight classes i think the ufc has way too few weight classes i really do i just when it gets between like 85 and 205, that to me is crazy. 20 pound gap, that's bananas. It's just so much. 205 and 265, what the hell? That's a big jump. It's a big jump, man. And you see John Jones is actually having a hard time putting weight on.

Yeah, it's the same that. Yeah. I mean, the weight he's putting on. Look, there's weight and then there's Francis Ngannou weight, right? It's a different thing. Like, you look at Francis, like, that's a giant human. Like, he's cutting weight to make 265. He's a natural 265. Enormous fists. Enormous shoulders.

Like, everything about him is huge. Like, if you want to get to look like that like that's a multi-year Process to go from a guy who makes 205 like Francis ain't making 205, bro He's just not making that so if you want to go up and fight that guy you either have to be a rock-solid 240 or if you're gonna really try to get to the 260 range I mean I've talked to like pro power lifters and bodybuilders and people who do stack a lot of weight on and put muscle mass on. I'm like, it takes years.

It takes years. And then on top of that, then there's the cardio requirement of all that muscle. John Jones is a cardio machine. But being used to that weight. Exactly. It's a different world. It's a different world. Talking about Nagano, I was meant to be on the same card as him and uh we got covered but uh we didn't know so

we're still going to the pi and things like that because we're getting tested and the latest test was all good and then the morning the morning i fight oh they're sorry the the day that we we found out we we had covered those because there was a few of us, we were sitting in the sauna shaking hands with Nagano, and he was fighting the next day, and we're like, oh, no. And then we're here, we're watching ads of Nagano's fighting, and we're looking at each other like, I fucking hope so. You know what I mean? We started shitting ourselves up.

Please don't tell me we gave him the COVID and things like that. He wouldn't be fucking happy. Is that when he fought Rosenstreich? No, no, that was the last one. That was withstreich? No, no, that was the last one. That was with Stipe? Yes. Yeah, that was the last one. Oh, my God.

I was meant to be on that card with Ortega. Imagine if that killed the whole card. Oh, mate, that's what I mean. I was like, we were fucking nervous, I'll tell you that. I'm like, finding that in, he's going to know it's from us. You know what I mean? It's like, well, Alice got it. A few days later later I fucking got it

well the good thing about him he doesn't have to cut weight so his body never is depleting you know I mean he's just

sort of like watching his diet and he gets down to 265 he's not draining himself you know do you incorporate a lot of sauna

into everyday workouts or is it just when you're cutting weight no no because you know I like in a good sweater even hot baths and all that I love in a flush and flushing that body out we'd like to talk you know I just think it's a makes me feel good too like you know everyone does the ice cold baths on hot and ice cold I don't fucking like cold water I'll be honest I did better like through through this trip being at the UFC PI. We got into the recovery room and I got into the ice bath a fair bit.

So I was happy with that. But I fucking hate it. But I mean, I love the hot baths. And I feel like whenever I do that, I feel like my body feels unreal. I feel like it really does help with my recovery. I don't know if there's science behind it, but I'm fucking claiming it. I reckon it works. There is definitely science behind it even even for recovery and things like

that yeah okay well there you go it's also it increases your endurance it has a mild red blood cell count expanding effect like a mild EPO type effect there's something about doing it particularly I think no not quite it's something it does something okay it's just you're not going to be able to get hot as as hot okay it does it's definitely better than nothing they say the same thing about steam but the real benefit is in sauna and the studies that because it's harder did you say yeah you need hotter I have like when I do the hot baths it gets fucking hot you know they're hotter than it's meant to be because of my phone

sure it gets hot but it doesn't give me hot. I think hotter than it's meant to be because of my foot. Oh, I'm sure it gets hot, but it doesn't get- It would be happy with how hot I make the bath. It doesn't get 200 degrees, right? Oh, no, I don't think that much. You know who Laird Hamilton is, the surfer? Yep. He's a fucking alien, okay? Like, dude, like a legit alien.

The guy broke his ankle and never did anything about it, just kept walking around on it, so his ankle's fused, and it's like the size of this fucking coffee pot. When did this happen? A long time ago. He just doesn't give a fuck, just kept walking around on it. So his ankles fused, and it's like the size of this fucking coffee pot. When did this happen? A long time ago. He just doesn't give a fuck, just keeps walking around on it. Show his ankle. Show Larry Hamilton's ankle. By the way, never had it worked on.

Just cracked his ankle and just kept walking around. He doesn't give a fuck. But I was going to say about him, he's just one of those guys that, world champion surfer, but just insanely mentally strong. Gets in a sauna at 220 degrees with oven mitts on and rides an airdyne bike. Fuck. I'm not bullshitting.

Look at his ankle. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how his ankle is right now. Walks around with this fucking completely blown out ankle. That's like a jujitsu ankle. I know, right?

Like some people get the knuckles. Like some people's knuckles, like Megaton Diaz. You ever seen Mackenzie Dern's dad, rather? His hands are just crazy knuckles. They must be so painful. Oh, my God. I mean, that's crazy arthritis. Every joint is swollen like a knob like all like a tree

Like you know like a knot in a tree. Yeah. Yeah Yeah My fingers used to kind of be like that when I would train key every day like they were heading to that point and I Remember like the relief in my hands when I switched full-time to no gear was just like I noticed it basically overnight Mmm, and it's just recovered immediately It's that kind of gripping that people do all the time like that. I mean, that's got to have like some long-term consequences. And the grip breaks.

Like all the time my finger would just swell up. I'd be like, like it'd get stuck off a grip break. Someone would kick out of a grip and it would just be like, oh, fuck, but you have to train again the next day. Did you do anything to try to mitigate that? Like ice? I would just try to keep it moving. I felt like the first few times I'd be like, I better rest and then it would take forever to heal but like no matter how painful it

was i would just keep trying to kill that finger back like there was a period where i couldn't get any of my fingers back to the hands but then just keep crushing literally you couldn't touch that you couldn't do this yeah like in terms of the curling motion like obviously that was fine but it would be the you couldn't curl your fingers back to i couldn't connect them yeah wow just from so much jiu-jitsu yeah in your 20s you know yeah early 20s old man hands yeah yeah yeah so many guys have arthritis as they get older it's uh particularly in the hands i mean you see like you see those old pictures of elio's hands when he was rolling no i haven't seen it was like in his 80s and 90s, and he was still rolling. That's crazy.

It's just the guy never stopped training. Obviously, I'm sure he picked his training partner. It's not like he's going to roll with Nicky Rod or something like that. I have to roll with that fucking guy every day, man. That guy is such a freak. When he was at the Who's Number One last time, and I'm standing next to him, I'm like, how are we the same species? If we were any other animal in the woods,

you would see like this is one rep. You know, like gorillas are basically the same size, right? They all get pretty big. You know, but he's this fucking enormous super athlete dude. Like what does Nicky weigh? I think he's about 250 with abs, can do back flips. Oh, yeah, freakish athleticism. Freakish, you know?

And just crazy hip mobility, too. I remember asking him about that, too, because with his match with Yuri, I was like, the fucking hip mobility that he has is crazy. Like, his ability to move, his flexibility was, like, you usually see a big, giant giant guy like that and they're all weighed down from squats and deadlifts and everything stiff. He's not stiff.

Yeah, he's pretty mobile. Yeah, look at him. A pretty freak. The size of that fucking freak. He says the funniest shit too. He's always like, I remember one time he had staph

and it exploded on an airplane but then by the time he landed the flight back to America it was all, it had somehow started to heal up. And he was like, it's just mindset, bro. Positive thinking. Well, it's also being 24.

How old is he? Yeah, I think he's probably 24. When you're young, you heal everything really quick. But staph, was he taking antibiotics? No. He's like, I'll just wait until I get back. It was huge. It was when he had the match with Luke Rockhold.

You could see it in the match, like this nasty staph infection. Fucking hell. Really? Just doesn't give a fuck, yeah. He just rolled with it in the match? Yeah. There's a school of thought. Like, should you take antibiotics or should you just compete with the staff and then take

antibiotics afterwards? Obviously, you're putting your opponent at risk, which is the problem. I would take antibiotics afterwards. Obviously, you're putting your opponent at risk, which is the problem. I would take antibiotics and compete. I would just be like, yeah, fuck. I'd rather get onto this and still compete. But the antibiotics wreck you. Yeah, they used to. Yeah, they used to.

But for some reason now, the last few times I've had it, I felt fine in camp. Like I thought, like I used to, like back in the day, like a few years ago i'd notice that i'd be like man a full fucking shit where i'm expecting that and then it's just i'm like oh i'm fine so now i'm not too worried about i've had staff twice and the one time that i had the first time i had it um it was uh i caught it early but the antibiotics i remember being like lightheaded at at a restaurant i was just like oh my god like my world was like closing in I felt like so so tired

and I was like I wonder if this is a staff or the antibiotics I'm like I think it's the antibiotics because the staff was real minor like I my buddy Tate had caught it we were at the airport together and I was wearing shorts and I had my you know I'm like my foot up like this and there's some shit on my calf. He goes, what is it? What's on your calf? I go, I don't know. What is it? He goes, dude, I think that's staff. I go, come on. These little pimples. He's like, yeah, that's what it looks like. Go get it checked out. And I went in, the doctor's like, oh yeah, we're going to get you on antibiotics right away. We're going to do a culture test, but I'm pretty sure it's staff. And so he put me on those antibiotics and I was feeling fine. And then that night I was just like,

and I was thinking, and I tried training, uh, not like rolling, but I tried like lifting weights and shit. And I felt so weak. And I was like, how the fuck does anybody fight like this? Cause I remember Luke Rockhold, when he beat Chris Weidman he had staff he was on antibiotics while he beat him which is crazy yeah I feel like some people yeah like me I was taking antibiotics every month for staff so I was like I just don't think there's any good bacteria left to kill so I just didn't notice they were taking it every month for how long when I was in New York I had staff every month for 12 months so I do a week a week of antibiotics every month that shit everybody dangerous to me like you get that like obviously we've got the media

it's around the meat but that gets under the like second layer of skin and gets near the bone and that like you get infections through there it's fucking my friend Brian Callen his friend's wife died from staff they tried to use some sort of holistic methods to heal it and her fucking gums were bleeding and like he came over to the house and he's like bro you gotta get her to a hospital

and it was too late a jujitsu kid died because he put his contact lens fell on the mat put it in his eye staff in his eye straight to the brain

dead oh man what he was like an 18 year old kid I can't remember his name he was in it was in Los Angeles what

took him out it can rock you, too. I've had MRSA before, and I had it on my arm. And as you were saying, I had fevers, and it absolutely rattled me. Obviously, after Aldo and me, I got a, what was it called? That was something different. Cellulitis. Cellulitis.

So I got that, and that absolutely rocked me. But cellulitis is the same thing. Yeah, well, that's what I mean. That's what I had, yeah. I was like 40 plus, I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but degree, like I was like losing the plot. Like I didn't know where I was. I was like, I was gone.

Actually, we were a bit worried because last camp broke my finger and a bit of skin, like it was broken, like it was skin, so we were like sort of cut open on the top. So we didn't know if that was from the bone ripping through. So we were worried about getting infection. During camp that happened? Last camp, yeah. And that's funny. We were just talking about that.

I don't know if you can see. It's still fat and a bit more. Yeah. Because I was going to do surgery after the fight. How far into the camp was this? I don't know. A couple weeks into camp So the rest of the camp

You fought You just trained with a broken finger Yeah You fucking animal But then like I was like The guy goes We'll just do the surgery afterwards

And if we You know whatever happens If we have to pull the bone out We'll pull the bone out But I mean you got like The tendons and that as well But I didn't fight So I'm like

Well fuck do I do it now Or I don't know when I'm fighting So we just left it So now I'm just gonna leave it And you didn't fight so I'm like well fuck do I do it now or I don't know when I'm fighting so we just left it so now I'm just gonna leave it and you didn't need any surgery or anything

it's like well did you get an x-ray I don't know I probably should look into it but I mean we're running again

like I was just gonna do it after the fight but I mean you feel like it's alright now like we're grappling every day and all that

but man once they told me that obviously I was worried about I was like fuck like you know what's gonna happen here but they're like oh no look we'll just worry about after the fuck my sweet so i'm punching with it i'm fucking it hurts right you know you hit it wrong it's gonna fucking you're trying to clinch up and things like that you lose a bit of strength there that did you have to tape the other fingers to it to give um nah well they gave me a splint

for the training that helped a fair bit. But I mean, you fucking bang it. It's going to fucking hurt. But I mean, obviously while you're fighting, you're fighting with it, you're hurt, you just keep going.

You worry about it afterwards and I'll get a surgery. That was the plan but that didn't happen. And when did you get MRSA? MRSA, I think I've had it twice. Well,

I had it the once here. So I had it on my hand. Man, I don't have my phone on me but I've got photos that will end up being a big hole in my hand and and that and it rattled me so we had to get the nurses come to my house and all that like every every day in the morning afterwards and i was like uh because i didn't know much about it but they're like oh no yeah they were trying

to get antibiotics while trying to find out the bacteria and they're like you're mercer we're gonna have to get the big guns out i didn't know what that meant but but they just gave me like a yeah so I rattled me out to pull out of a fight but that was it well before UFC I've had I've had staff and been on any bodix for my second fight in the UFC to Mizuno who wrote her so I had staff then and and I remember my it was the fucking worst cuz I've come I went to Vegas for the UFC retreat like two weeks before the fight. And I was there for a couple of days. So I traveled all the way from Thailand to America and then did that for a couple of days and then flew all the way back.

And then I just got everything. I got staff. I ended up getting like the flu. I ended up getting sick the night of the fight. I just thought, fuck, this is the worst. But I won, so it's all good. Staff scares the shit out of me. And what really scares the shit out of me is a lot of gyms don't tell people,

like the young people that are starting out, what it is. My friend Ari and I were playing pool, and he was limping. He was walking around the pool table limping. And I go, what's going on? He goes, I got a spider bite. I go, let me see. He pulls his pants up. He shows me his knee. I go,'s going on he goes I got a spider bite I go let me say he pulls his pants up it shows me his knee I go dude stop and I unscrew my pool cue I go we're going to hospital right now and he goes

you serious I go you got to go to the hospital right now I go you got staff infection I go that's really bad I go that's that's from jiu-jitsu and he's like why the fuck don't they tell you there should be signs everywhere I'm like yeah there should be yeah I don't run the gym have you heard of uh ekc no ekc is another jujitsu one that uh i only found out about last year but it's uh viral pink eye it's called it's like epidemic carotid conjunctivitis i'm seeing them go through some james man it permanently uh ruined the vision in one of my eyes oh so you catch it right your eye will not stop watering and crusting and like uh i couldn't see out of the eye properly for a good six months

at all so it's different i could see but it's different it's it's viral pink eye yeah so it's just like there's no known treatment for it you have to do steroid drops in the eye antibiotic drops in the eye i had to compete with it, and it was horrible. So your opponent got pink eye after that? I did give two of my opponents pink eye, but it was for ADCC. If it was at any other event, I would have been like, you know what, I'm stepping out. But I'm like, this shit's every two years.

You filthy bastard. The worst was for ADCC, you have to make weight three days in a row. And I had to drop four kilos every day. So it would be like nine, 10 pounds. And the worst thing was I had to jump in the sauna and the hot air on my eye was fucking unbearable every day. Every day I would have to do all the steroid drops and stuff. And then I would have to do like a chemical burn cup for your eye. I'd have to fill that with saline, hold it onto my eye, blink a bunch of times, try to clear out all the fluid. But yeah, literally I was on the meds for probably six to

eight weeks. Then you have to wean off because your eye gets adjusted to the corticosteroids. And literally six months at nighttime driving, I couldn't see out of my right eye. I would be like completely blurred vision. And the doctors, the eye doctors were like, guys, man, this is just, there's nothing we can do. Eventually your eye will be better. But then because of the leakage and the conjunctivitis, it scarred my eye. So it's like one eye is great, one eye is slightly still fucked up from it. How fucked up? Can you read?

Not too bad. Yeah, I can still read and stuff. Because if you close your eye, you can read? Yeah, yeah. Just slightly worse. But it was just like, I remember catching that, and it's super contagious. When it hits a gym, it gets everyone. And you're like that and it's super contagious when it hits a gym it gets everyone like and you're like fuck it i'll give it to everybody i've seen it in thailand go

literally through everyone really in thailand like you go there and they're like you go i'm like every time i've seen someone i'm like putting fucking what do you call it like the alcohol wipes in my eyes and shit like that just trying to make sure i didn't get and i'll just see it just go through did you avoid it i didn't get it how'd you do it so the the fucking sanitizers in the eyes maybe literally at some point i'll be like oh fuck i touched him i'll touch my eye i'd like wipe it but obviously not in my eye but um but just yeah man just trying to stay away from them but it's i've seen it go through like at least 15 different people it's so bad by the short in the short time i was there like you get it like within

a day or two you're fucking your eye blows up did you talk to those two dudes that you gave it to i did i did apologize to him yeah you're like sorry man but it's fucking adc what did they say uh like i can't see one of them was cool the other one was wasn't cool when he started showing symptoms but forgave me afterwards and stuff but yeah some of the competitors in the show knew it was going around tried to get me eliminated from the event and I was just like come on it's ADCC it's Olympics you know what I mean what are you gonna it is what it is man you know like wow some of these fucking infections and that

they can get nasty when you said you had staff every month for a year how the fuck does that happen

how do you never get over it was it in the same spot over and over again because obviously this is what fucked Gordon's stomach up right

from this massive amount of antibiotics and he had a similar situation right so it's just going through the whole gym maybe the internet killed it though I don't know Gordon's stomach up, right, from this massive amount of antibiotics. And he had a similar situation, right? So it was just going through the whole gym. Maybe the In-N-Out cured it, though. No, I don't know. I had it until we moved.

When we moved to Puerto Rico, I just stopped getting staff. So I don't know if it just happened to be the blue basement, the particular strain that was going around there. Maybe I was very vulnerable to it. But the second we moved to Puerto Rico, started getting more sun, started getting in the ocean, felt like it actually helped i was worried though because puerto rico's humidity like thailand staff's wild i was thinking like maybe it's going to be worse in puerto rico but it just i've had staff once since then i wonder if getting in the ocean is good for your skin

i mean yeah i mean it must be better than whatever was happening in in new york well and i would also imagine the ocean around pu Rico is pretty nice. Like, it's probably not polluted. Yeah, not as bad. Not as bad as, definitely not as bad as New York, right? Yeah. But I would imagine there's probably some benefit of being in the ocean. Here it goes.

Mineral-rich ocean water can calm irritation and reduce inflammation in skin. Soaking or bathing in seawater is recommended to soothe symptoms of psoriasis and other dry skin conditions the magnesium in ocean water can also encourage good skin health fucking Jamie on the ball as always so we're getting staff in the same spot it's just different different spots I think some of it today was to do with overtraining as well usually that's an indicator for me that I am overtraining. Overtraining, take out, take away food.

That'll do it. That'll do it. You think the pizza will cure it. Give it more time about the food. Yeah, yeah. But I was going to say, it is a lot just immune systems, man. Like I believe that, you know, if you're run down and that, like that's when I would always get them.

Even like, yeah, stressing about weight, kind of not eating right, all that type of stuff, I'd get them now because I'm on point with most of it. But I barely get them even like yeah stressing about weight kind of not eating right all that type of stuff i'd get them now because i'm on point with most of it i i barely get them you know i don't stress about it when i see people i used to be oh freak out and then yeah next day it gets worse but uh i reckon the immune system definitely plays a big part with a lot of things sunshine sunshine on the mats too i think like basement gyms i think that's going to be much more you're going to be much more susceptible to it whereas a a gym with some sunshine in there, I feel like it just really does help. Oh, for sure. I would imagine it's just a healthy environment overall.

But that purple, the blue mat, rather, down in the basement at Henzo's, do they defumigate that place? Do they do anything to fucking kill off all the cooties that are running around that joint? I think so. They started doing something wild after COVID started coming around. They started putting UV lights on the mat and stuff like some i don't even know what it was doing some wild shit down there but at that point we're already was that for the covid and that as well seeing them doing yeah yeah i think i think

it was for the covid yeah i don't know i think that i mean some people they just didn't get staff and then others and generally speaking like if i speak to white belts and blue belts that are hobbyists they don't really get it and I think that they're not as susceptible because their immune system is not as crashed. So I think it's mostly the athletes that are vulnerable. Do you think there's a balance to be had? Maybe you work out a little too much. Like maybe if you took it back a notch, it would actually be better for you. I mean, it could be.

You're going to have to convince John. I don't know how you could. I mean, I don't know. You know, when I talked to him and I said, what about rest days. I mean, it could be. You're going to have to convince John. I don't know how you could. I mean, I don't know. You know, when I talked to him and I said, what about rest days? He goes, no rest days. It's like, he just like looked at me like that was ridiculous. He goes, if you're tired, just train light. Yeah.

I mean, I do sneak rest days. Like me, I'll just go, I'm just going to train until one day I wake up and I'm like, no, I can't do it today. I'll take a day off. But some of the guys will just, they're there every day. And that's typically the guys that I would say train the hardest, probably the juniors, like the up-and-coming guys, because I feel like they've got ground to catch up.

So those are the guys that really never miss any sessions. Gary was probably the most infamous for training, like just a crazy person. Like he would just be there all day, every day. He just puts in that work. Well, he's doubling it up too, right? Because he would do the MMA all day every day he just puts in that work well he's doubling it up too right because he would do the mma gordon was saying mma sessions and then jujitsu sessions in the same day every day and he's a smaller guy right so it's like it's easier for me

even me like obviously i'm not as big as gordon or nikki rod but it is easier for me to be like oh just pick i'll pick a smaller guy i have an easier round right uh whereas a guy like gary you know what i mean most of the training partners are either the same size or bigger so it's it's a bit tough it's probably like you at city kickboxing you know what i mean like if you're trying to have a light round you're like these guys are all bigger than me it's a bit harder to harder to manage everyone's bigger than me we were with him on the show actually every time we started the season right every time we take a team photo Everyone I get everyone to stand on their toes and we wouldn't tell

They clearly don't need to But they would anyway, but it was just I just didn't know like I seen I'm like what they're fucking all in on this fucking Joke, like when did this happen? I'll see the photo and literally all of them. I'm like, oh, what do you have a fucking group meeting? Let's make Alex look even shorter. Listen, bro, we're in the same boat. I feel your pain. There's nothing you can do about it.

I'm shrinking as I get older too, which is even more fucked up because my discs, I'm having problems with some of my discs. Like as you're, you know, you see like old people shrink. That's what's going on. It's like their discs is deteriorating. You know, they call it, what is it called? Spinal stenosis. Okay. like the discs is deteriorating. You know, they call it what is called spinal stenosis.

Okay. So deterioration of the disc. You know, that's when people get bone on bone. They have to get their discs fused. That's what's going on. There's only so much you can do to prevent that too. Yeah, that just happened at an early age for me. Well, so many guys are fucking, as they get older, they're getting disc replaced.

Like I talked to Braulio Esteema He sent me an x-ray of his fucking neck and was he some crazy shit? He's got two fake discs in his neck funny because I always say that as well people get how totally I'm a fuck with six On a good day once I've done a bit of yoga and stretched out I'll be five six because I'm like just on the border there. I'm like just under it, but I claim five six Look at this. This is Braulio's neck. Holy shit. Two of those in his neck, there's how it's pieced together.

That's not Braulio's neck, though. That might be his lower back or some shit. You've seen the video of when he injured it? I think that's just a random photo because his actual neck is this, Jamie. He has fake discs. Yeah, I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you so you can have it. Hold on a second.

But he won the Worlds with a fucked up neck. Did you see the video when he actually inches it? No. Oh, that was right. Right. Was he going for someone got him in a guillotine? I think it was like the guy hip tossed him against the cage and he's he landed fully vertical like Spiked into the cage and immediately couldn't move. Yeah, that happened to mark. Yeah, yeah

Cuz even a last camp again. I had to get a cortisone shot in my neck For the last camp because that I don't know what happened It was a punch or something then my whole arm just like went dead and my whole shoulder and everything just started burning. Really? Burning. I was like, what the fuck? I thought, you know, you get stingers, but it just would not go away. You can get bad stingers, man.

Those are terrifying as well. Yeah, but this one just stayed and I'm like, fucking burnt, burnt. All that stuff is your discs, right? Bulging and pushing against the nerves. And as you look at and as you it felt like fire see how like those are spacers so that's those are titanium articulating discs that they replace his neck discs and he competed with that not well he competed with his discs completely fucked up and won the world's won the

world's before the surgery and then they got the surgery now he's trying to avoid getting surgery on the ones above it and below it because they all start deteriorating. So I've got like three or four of them that have shrunken down and become a real pain in the ass. And one of them is my lower back and I've been doing some shit for that. You can kind of stretch out and, but you got to always be aware. And if you're training, if you're doing jujitsu every day, it's just a little bit of squish and everything's getting compressed and all that stuff. It's the worst injury, right? Can you train hard?

Yeah, I can train hard, but only like a day a week or two days a week. I could never do seven days a week. There's no way. My shit would start falling apart. I would start getting I get What's it called sciatica I get that down because my lower back Sometimes it bulges against but it's it's all I can as long as I'm not going crazy at 53 years old I can do a lot of shit, but there's just there's limitations like The disc limitations a big one because there's not. If you tear a ligament, they could fix it, but if you fuck your discs up, it's like the

options are do what Eddie Bravo, too, he's got a fake disc in his lower back. Quite a few, Aljamain Sterling just got a fake disc put in. He just got his disc replaced in his neck. Chris Weidman has a fake disc in his neck. There's quite a few guys who have replaced discs. it's like man that gets sketchy I know a guy who had a bunch replaced in his back he went to Germany they did a procedure on a bunch and then all of a sudden out of nowhere one of his legs just start shrinking really so like his calf is like non-existent on one of his legs his

calf is like a bone. And he's this big strapping guy and one of his calves just atrophied and the doctors don't exactly know why or what to do about it because he had all this work done on his back but something is blocking the nerve whether it's scar tissue or inflammation or what have you. It's like back scares the fuck out of you, man. That's what's funny. I told you last time, the guy I'm like,

when I first went to BAME, I'm telling him about my back and that, and he's like, oh, look, I wanted to show him my discs. And he goes, I didn't even look at that. Once you can't control your bowels and you've got the foot drop, then we'll look at it. You'll be right. So they just went, let's see how we go with a bit of maintenance and all that. And then, sure enough, I was moving.

I do know that they are doing some work now where they're actually injecting stem cells directly into discs, and they're having discs. I mean, this is, I don't know, maybe Google this, because this is all hearing from people that have been doing research on it, and I don't exactly know what the studies show. But they're apparently having some results. That's why they can do a lot of wild shit in, like, Columbia and Panama. You go down there to, like, BioAccelerator

and, you know, Dr. Neil Reardon's place in Panama. They just... They can do all sorts of shit that they can't really do in America yet. That's where Cejudo went, right? I remember him telling me. Yes. He went to Columbia, I believe. Yeah. And T.J. Dillshaw went to Neil Reardon's place, which is in Panama.

I sent my mom there, too. My mom went down there twice for her knee. Helped? Yeah, helped a lot. She was in serious pain. And then six months later, no more pain. Gone. Yeah, in her 70s.

Wow. Her knee was pretty fucked up. But it's just, it's not legal america yet to do a lot of the stuff that they do you can do some stuff here but you definitely can't do stuff to the extent that you can do in uh panama and some of these other countries it's interesting i'll need this or i need to start warming up one day well just one day it's just like that i need to warm up because i'm eventually do that yeah it's What you've done is interesting because what you've figured out is like whatever issues you were having with your discs in your back, strengthening all the muscles around and preventing it is the best way to go about it. And by getting on a program where you really put a lot of rigidity into your back and made it all strong and supported,

you've prevented all the problems. A lot of movement at the hips before training and that again. Like let's try and get the load off the back. If your hips aren't moving right, where's all the movement? Low back. You're putting all that pressure. Like you said, not using the wrong muscles and all that type of stuff. That's exactly what happened. They were telling me to tense certain muscles and try and use this without using your core. I couldn't do it. You've got to use your glutes. My glutes weren't firing. I couldn't do it. Like you've got to use your glutes. I'm like my glutes weren't firing. I couldn't even do it.

Like that's how much I would use other muscles, back muscles and things like that where they're like, no, you should be using your fucking glutes here. You know what I mean? But now after doing all that now, yeah. Are you doing neck strengthening exercises or anything too? I guess I'm not. Well, I had to do it for this in

the last camp because as i said i got the cortisone shot in in that camp and it just kept happening so i ended up end up like go there and i got that and it got burnt and then like a couple of days later got back and i had to have a few days off from the stingers yeah well like well that because i've had stingers before and they just go away this would like like end up staying on fire for for a while but then did you get an mri and then order nah oh yeah we did and then they end up saying like it's just all ugly in there he goes you they look at and they go yeah they're just like you could tell you played fucking rugby league and you're an mma fighter put it that way but i mean like you know sometimes they don't look and like looking at him because you know they know it's gonna look

fucked up especially guys that have been in sport their whole life but he goes and they could see where the problem was so that's why they put the quarter zones because they happened a couple of times and they would have to have a few a few days off right i was like well we can't do this all camp like i can't just have how old are you now alex uh 32. so then they they put that in and then like let that uh sort of so like whatever they got to do you have a few days off for that and then uh even though it would happen here and there they were just minor and i was perfectly fine within within a minute do you ever use that iron neck device which one's that you don't know the iron neck is that the turning one yeah yeah actually we had that they had that apex it's the yeah but they got me on like a thing where

like you you put on the door and then like they pull your head up you open yourself oh that too yeah yeah but i started doing some stuff yeah weird uh it like decompresses your spine yeah i love that that was good like click click click click click and you're like kind of hanging yourself yeah but it's good exactly what is that that's what you need to try to give it some space and stretch it out so if you do that on a regular basis that'll provide you with some benefit yeah there's another machine that um i use all the time at home it It's called the Dex. It's by Teeter. And you hang from your hips.

You get in it almost like a leg curl thing, and you lean forward. And all the weight is on. All just gravity relaxes your back. You feel it pop. I think you showed me. Yeah, I think I did too. You showed me after we had our chat. That's right, after the studio. I don't remember much of it, but I remember that.

Craig, do you ever use any weight lifting things for your neck use like iron neck or anything no i did try it at the apex that was cool because i see you you don't turn your neck much no i'm pretty stiff yeah i'm noticing that i'm like is it hurt or is it just i think it's tight from jujitsu oh just people hanging off it and shit. But yeah, I should. Maybe. Could it be because you didn't stretch? Maybe. I wonder if you did stretch and you did like, somebody like worked on you, if you would have like better movement and you'd actually be better.

I wonder, yeah. I feel like very stiff. And then when I'm on the mats and they're stretching me out and stuff, I feel like that's when I start to loosen up. But yeah, it'd be good to be a bit looser all the time, I think. Well, you're a professional athlete. Why don't you just do that?

I should. I should. Let's be real. It's an intervention. It seems like we're stepping in here. It's your job. Yeah. It is your job, right?

We're just into him now. Come on, man. You've got to do this. Sort out the diet. Sort out the stretching. But in saying that, like, you're hanging with him in that. Like, yeah, maybe he got to do this. Sort out the diet. Sort out the stretch. But in saying that, like, you'll be hanging with him in that. Like, yeah, maybe he didn't do them types of things, but, like, he's constantly on, like, YouTube and, like, studying things,

looking up wrestling and all that and, like, you know, breaking down, like, goes and watches and breakdowns, like, get breakdowns of, like, certain things. And so, like, obviously you can see, again, you can still see what separates some people from the rest of them. Like, yeah, maybe he doesn't pay as much detail or attention to to the maybe the mobility side of things but you see a lot of energy towards film studies and all that type of stuff and obviously train it yeah and you well your history of learning like watching a lot of the submissions that the donna her crew was doing

before you joined them and learning them from YouTube videos than just applying it to your own game. Yeah, basically. I mean, like, when I started training jiu-jitsu, my original coach was my cousin, Matt Jones, and he was a four-stripe white belt at the time because the city we were from was pretty, there wasn't much jiu-jitsu going on.

So even from day one, I never really had a really, I guess, experienced coach. So, like, I would just be trying to figure things out like i'd watch the ufcs and see a submission be like fuck i'm gonna try that try that in the next class and like even i didn't even train with a black belt until i was well into my purple belt like just had no high level exposure so i was just forced to try and reverse engineer everything i saw and really try to i really had the assumption that i'm behind the eight ball so I've got to try and find little tricks to get ahead. Like, and that's where the heel hook stuff really took off. Well, once you started competing though, and started

traveling and doing that, it's, it's really interesting that you did have this very limited exposure to top level talent, but you just decided to throw yourself into the fire and go out there and, and travel, literally travel the world and compete. Yeah, I would literally just go on a seminar tour and use the seminar portion, rolling with strangers, to keep myself fit. And when I'd show up to an event like EBI here in Austin, I remember I just put up an Instagram post. I was like, who wants to be in my corner? I don't have anyone to coach me. And funnily enough, Denny Prokopos jumped in the corner.

He was in my corner the whole event. I don't know what the fuck he was saying the whole time. He was trying to give me code funnily enough Denny Prokopos jumped in the corner. He was in my corner the whole event. I don't know what the fuck he was saying the whole time. He was trying to give me code words and stuff. But he was there for support. He was saying shit that I had no idea what he was talking about. Some of the shit he was saying, yelling out 10th Planet moves and I was like,

I don't know what's going on bro. Crack head control. You're like what? Did you ever see Denny's staph infection his knee no bad one he had to open up his knee like a fish like it's a huge scar on his knee it was just horrible I think he I don't know if it was Mercer or what what what kind of staff it was but it was it was awful those are scary get so nasty man like even when I was in the hospital in Rio, it ended up being in Chile by the time we got there,

just even me, because I had to have my leg up so the blood could go down and all that because of all the swelling and all that. We started, finally, we want to go home. You haven't been home for a while. We were there for a week and then they ended up doing MRIs and then found out from me having my legs up and being in that position so much, my lungs were like right up in my chest so I couldn't get on the plane so that we had to like do certain things to bring my lungs back down so I could

get back onto an airplane. So I had to do these blowing things as hard as you can to just get my lungs back down to in the normal spot because if I flew the way it was, not because of the staff just from the position i was in really that's what i mean i'm just like hell like what do you mean i can't go home yet because lungs have moved my lungs my lungs pushed up higher for me being in this position and like being in there all day for like four or five days they did mri and then they seen that my lungs were like too far up yeah so they're like on that you can't go on a plane like that we need to bring him down the way you put it down was blown on this little thing you get so crazy you get you always get medical conditions and get stuck a like happens

every time every time we do camp if you know you've been stuck in America for three months now right yeah exactly got'll go like every time i'm meant to fight or fight something fucking happens now to go back home do you have to get vaccinated like what do you have to do to go back home we're still quarantined so we leave tonight but i'm gonna go home and i still need to do the two-week quarantine but why is it two weeks so does that make sense um i don't know i'm not i couldn't tell you i feel like because they tested the whole time. Right. Obviously in a week, I thought maybe in a week's time,

they still see you don't have it. You've already gone through COVID. Well, I can't get it. So you have the antibodies. It's a long time. Well, we were in the show, we were in the show because I had it

and obviously I've got, I'm immune to it, I'm immune to it, whatever it is, but I didn't even have to get tested cause they know I can't get it. So type thing. So, but I mean,

I still need to go. People have got it twice. My friend Mo Mo got it twice within the 90 days as well no oh okay 90 days he got a few months later he got a second time okay but he said the second time was so mild it was nothing yep yeah the first time it's kind of sucked but the second time was nothing is that because he still had some antibodies do you think yeah yeah the second time was much more mild because he had some antibodies. And he's, you know, he could take care of himself a little bit better.

You know, he's not an athlete. He's not out there taking care of his body. He just fucked up. He's a comedian. Hilarious dude, but living that wildlife. Yeah. That's how you catch it twice. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it was Dave's whole crew, Dave Chappelle's whole crew. They all caught COVID. Like a shitload of them got it. Oh, fuck. Yeah. There's quite a few. Six or seven people, I think, got it. Yeah.

I've been around a bunch of people that got it and never got it. I went to a concert once backstage. We're hanging out in the green room, all having a good time. Everybody got COVID except me. Everybody. concert once backstage we're hanging out in the green room all having a good time everybody got covid except me everybody the uh the keyboard player had covid didn't tell everybody and one of the one of his band members like why are you wearing a mask what the fuck's going on turns out he had covid and you didn't get it i didn't get it no everybody got it i mean i was talking to everybody everybody but i'm on a shitload of vitamins and i've been on a shitload

of you drink a lot you drink a lot? Do you drink a lot? No, I'm joking. That's something that we've sort of come on to. It's like, wait a second, people. I do drink, though. I enjoy alcohol, but I don't drink a lot. Like, I don't get fucking hammered or anything. It's pretty rare if I do.

But the thing that I do do is, first of all, sauna every day, mass amounts of vitamins testosterone replacement that has a big impact apparently there was an article um that just came out yesterday about uh testosterone high levels of testosterone and covid symptoms and they used to think the opposite they used to think people with testosterone like they thought that men had bad covid responses they thought it might have been connected to testosterone but now they found that people with higher levels of testosterone, they have lower COVID symptoms, less severe COVID symptoms. And they think it's like, like naturally, like if your body's natural production of testosterone, it depends on your sleeping habits, how you're eating, taking care of yourself.

But if you're on testosterone replacement, it's the same level no matter what. So it's actually like a better level of testosterone than you would have normally just due to your endocrine system. Apparently that helps with people that have COVID. So that was one time that I was around it and everybody got it and I didn't get it. Another time was my whole family got it. My wife got it. Kids got it. Everybody got it.

And I was like, I talk all this shit. I'm i was like let's see so i didn't wear a mask just hung out with them did normal shit and uh just never got it it's funny you say that because uh well colby the guy that that's with us and he was on the on the show with us he's got very low testosterone i think it was from which i've never really heard of i don't know if you've heard of it he ended up he's they found out that he had like the testosterone was so low that he was like like a little a little like kid or like female like levels like really low he's like just do an animal but um i think it was from all the training like the negative calories and doing that for so long. Head injuries, too. Oh, really?

Yeah. That's one of the things that Dr. Mark Gordon has done a lot of work with. Don't tell him that. He'll blame me for that. You broke his back. That's a part of it, getting hit in the head. Getting hit in the head is terrible for your pituitary gland, apparently. And it's not just getting hit in the head from fighting.

It's playing soccer. People hitting the ball. They wind up with low testosterone. Jet skis, just riding, bang, bang, bang. The bouncing of jet skis rattles your head. You do it every day. You get low testosterone. Well, because of that, because they found out,

and then he got the fight dietician, Jordy, to just build a plan to try and get the testosterone back up. So he had to eat a heap, and then training couldn't be too crazy, and all this stuff just to try and get the testosterone back up. But whether that's why, because maybe he's been doing that, whether that's why he didn't get as bad symptoms as me. Maybe I'm just a little bitch with low testosterone. No, for you, for sure, it has to do with the training.

I mean, the thing is, people would think that someone who's training for a fight would be in excellent shape and you would ward off all sort of the sicknesses and injuries. But what they don't realize is you're far past working out. And you're in this area of this fine line between breaking your body down too much and breaking it down just enough so that your body is forced to reach like hyperhuman levels of conditioning. And you can't do it forever. This is the thing that people don't understand about strength and conditioning training in regards to a fight camp is that when a fighter is peaking for a fight, you cannot just stay there. It's not like you can just keep pushing that level. Exactly right.

Your body, there's super physiological levels that your body can achieve during a small window. And whether that is like eight weeks, ten weeks, whatever it is, where you ramp up and you get to this fucking where you're just ready to go. And I see you guys. When you run into that cage on fight night

and you're fucking slapping your hands together, that is a rare state of performance. And it can only be achieved by balancing that edge. And when you talk to top-level strength and conditioning coaches that work with fighters, it's an art to sort of balance that out. But during that time, your immune system gets fucking crushed. Yeah, 100%. So I was fit like i

was i was that like because i got the aura i had the aura ring so i could see my my heart rate i think some of the medication like while i was in hospital um that can bring the heart rate down but like i'm like low 40s but i was getting like i was averaging 35 all night that's crazy 35 and i'm like going i started freaking out because i started doing the old Google search and Google doctor. And I'm looking, I'm like, yeah, it can be if it gets into your heart, the infection gets in your heart, your heart rate will go lower or hurt more. And I'm like, what the fuck? I'm watching this go down. I was like, yeah, like I'll be 38.

The next day I was like 35, and I was under 40 the whole night. Like, you know what I mean? That's just sitting there. But it just shows you how fit I fucking was. Yeah. But, I mean, obviously the immune system probably down from that hard training that we were doing. Yeah, for sure. But that low heart rate is, I mean, if it's not because of the medication or the sickness, it's an indication of extreme cardio.

Bisping, I believe, when he was in his prime, he had a resting heart rate in the high 30s. Oh, really? It might have been in the mid 30s. It might have been like 35 or something like that. Bisping was crazy fit when he was in his prime. But again, so fucking tough that he destroyed his knees. Like Bisping's got two artificial knees now. Is it true that he was fighting with one eye the whole time?

Oh, yeah. That guy's a fucking animal. He can barely see out of his right eye. Barely see. Now it's a fake one. He can barely see out of his right eye. Barely see. Like, he wears... Now it's a fake eye now. He wears a contact. He gives, like, a contact that makes it look normal.

Because it's so fucked up. You know, from the Vitor Belfort fight, detached retinas, surgeries. Did I see somewhere that he pulled his eyeball out? Doesn't it... He took the lens out. He's got, like, a lens. Oh, fuck.

I thought he had to pull his eye out. I thought, like, literally he's got a fake eye now. No, when he puts the contact in, it looks normal. Oh, okay. But I don't think he can see through that contact. So he's essentially blind in one eye. And he said for his like, I think he said the last 10 fights he had, something crazy. His eye was fucked.

Yeah, I heard that. He's an animal. I mean, that motherfucker is so tough. Too tough. These fucking fighters put themselves through too too tough but he walks around knowing he was the middleweight champion of the world i mean that guy knocked out luke rockhold when luke rockhold was the fucking champ and you know that that guy walks around with that glory forever he is you never take that away from him you know know, you know that. You are the fucking featherweight champ of the world. No one can take that from you.

That's who you are, no matter what. I mean, even if you wind up losing, at one point in time, you were the baddest motherfucker that walked at 145 pounds. That's a fact. I ain't losing for a while now. I know. He had to get that in quick. Before you finish that sentence, before you change the subject.

Well, hey, man, that's why you're the fucking man you know and that's and in the division that you're in it's so exciting because there's so many guys that are challenging for that position you know that you do have max holloway just put on that amazing performance against calvin you do have brian ortega who's coming up next and i'm fucking pumped for that fight i'm really excited for that and i'm you know i'm real excited to see how you guys play off each other on The Ultimate Fighter. But that show to me, I always want to get to the fights. I don't want to see everybody throw watermelons at each other and give each other wedgies and shit like, okay, okay.

This season's more serious. So the producers did tell us, they said, obviously in the past we've picked some crazy people to try to stir up the reality aspect. But they said this time they really wanted to pick proper fighters serious fighters good good a lot well it's espn too right espn is going to have a different approach than say a lot of these networks that are more reality tv focused but at the end of the day it's a full of a house full of guys that are stuck with each other yes i don't care how yeah how chill they are, shit's going to happen. And you know what? There's some real amazing thing about being a part of that show

because that show is what launched the sport. You know, in 2005, when they had the very first season of The Ultimate Fighter, the Fertittas had already dumped, they were like $40 million in the hole. And they were like, Jesus Christ, we're losing money. We can't burn out all of our money on this thing that we're trying to make happen. And they fortunately were very wealthy. What it was is like when Eddie Bravo and I would go to the fights way back in the day, we used to always joke around like, you know what the sport needs? Some fucking crazy billionaire who loves the sport is just going to dump a bunch of money in it and let everybody else know how

great it is. And that's what they did. Like, really, that's what it took. The Fertittas bankrolled that show. It was their money that put that show together. I don't think they got a penny to do that show. I think they bankrolled the whole thing, and they were $40 million in the hole and thinking about selling. They were thinking about selling the UFC before they did that.

And then the ultimate fighter becomes a hit. And then Stefan Bonner versus Forrest Griffin in the finals is such a wild fight. Fucking bang. All these people were just calling their friends up. Dude, you got to see this shit. Turn on the Spike TV. Turn on Spike TV. And then it became what it is today.

And then Chuck Liddell and his fights and the chaos that he would bring to the octagon sort of embodied what people wanted to see in the sport this like hard-nosed savage with a head tattoo just coming out trying to murder people and it became this thing and now you guys are on it that's what i mean it's coming back so much history there and so much like we've all watched it we all like you know we all know about the the forest griffin stephen bonner fight and you know all of it so now we were to be a part of it was it's pretty crazy and it was it was good fun we enjoyed it yeah it really is history i mean when it comes down to this sport the ultimate fighter is really synonymous with the the beginning of the public awareness of mma 100 never going to fight mma right now i don't know he's got some hands you know maybe we've been working with

him a bit the tough thing would be it would be hard to get a uh a good first fight you know what i mean people are going to probably give me something difficult because of the jiu-jitsu career yeah of course and what really keeps me out of it as well is like uh that five minute round you know what i mean if i have a five minute grappling match it's fucking hard to take someone down or pull guard and submit them when they're trying to grapple you right let alone i have to not get knocked out take him down not get stood up hold him down and submit him it's really that five minute thing that i'm like fuck that doesn't favor jiu-jitsu guys that favors strikers and wrestlers right because you just have to be defensive enough to hold your position for five minutes and then get stood up again. Every fight, every round starts taking that.

Exactly, like even with the weight difference here, if I'm on top of Vox and he's like, he doesn't want to engage, it's hard to submit someone like that. You know what I mean? Even with a huge size and weight discrepancy. I can't not fucking engage you. I'll just have to like, I'm going to get fucked here, but I'm fucking trying something. Every time I roll, I'm just like, why the fuck trying something every time i'm rolling was just like why the did i go for that i was like why did you sit there it's just yeah but i mean i guess i guess that's just the that's made me who i am anyway what did you guys think of the old pride

way with the 10 minute first round that was cool i like that i think that's cool do you think that's i like that dude but especially a guy like you as a pressure fighter who likes to come forward and put a lot of pressure and see guys break. You get more of an opportunity for that. Because round one, when it's seven minutes in, you've got three more to go. I'll be honest with you. When we do sparring and that, I'll get a couple of guys. They'll probably do two and a half minutes each sometimes. And these guys are probably fit.

But when I'm fit, in the two and a half minutes they start everyone's again everyone's on point at the start but next minute like you know they've slowed down and by the end of the two and a half minutes

I'm going with them they're like and the next one in and I'll do you know you do the same thing but to have ten minutes with someone one whole round

because again like I just like I just get better and better as the rounds go like especially as the later the round goes so I would absolutely love that absolutely love it but I don't

know I think there's a real argument for that and I think pride pride had some great fucking rules they really did they had some great rules they had some little sketchy rules like stomping on the head and soccer kicks and shelly though her fake fights as well a lot of big fights the early days, there was a lot of fake fights. Yeah. They had quite a few that you could clearly see. What was that? Mark Coleman versus Takata?

Takata, yeah. That one's like. The heel hook where he's like, I'm not going to tap. I'm not going to. I love the commentary too. He's like, he passed his guard and now he's moving back to guard. I'm not sure what's going on. It was unfortunate.

But, you know, they had this weird combination of pro wrestling and actual fighting. And most of the fights were actual fights. Like, you know, Fedor and Minotauro. Holy shit. Go back and watch those fights. Watch Fedor and Krokop. And Fedor in his prime back then when he was running Pride, I think he's one of the most impressive fighters that's ever lived. He was a man.

And he could do anything. He could could submit you he could knock you out he would kick box with merco cro cop i mean it was that good he was a fucking monster face would not change the whole way through stoic top and bottom submissions too everything crazy yeah arm bars remember he hung man choy was seven feet tall he armbarred him? Like, that was wild. Yeah. Wild, man. Fedor was, I mean, he's a real legend. It's still going at it, which is kind of crazy, right? Yeah, I wonder what keeps someone in there at that point in their career. KGB. Oh, fuck it.

He's telling them to keep fighting. Yeah. I mean, maybe he still just enjoys it, you know? I mean, you've experienced the highs that that guy's experienced, you know, being the pride heavyweight champion for so long it's the money like is he still getting good coin like Bellator probably is paying him well Bellator is being very smart what they're doing is they're recognizing that you know there's like some real elite talent that's in these negotiating situations with the UFC guys like G Gegard Mousasi, guys like, you know, Roy McDonald,

you know, elite guys. And then they have these conversations, you know, Corey Anderson. They have these conversations and they go, look, we'll fucking pay you more. Like, come on over. Corey said he made more money. I had dinner with him down in Houston when we were out there for the fights, and Corey said he made more for two fights in Bellator than his entire UFC career. Damn.

Crazy. That is crazy to think. That's crazy. And I was like, wow. Like, well, you can't argue with that, you know? I mean, the guy's a prize fighter. He's there to make money. And they have high-level talent there, too, man.

You know, it's not the same talent, the same level of talent as the UFC, but that Pitbull guy, Patricio Pitbull, he's a bad motherfucker. I know. Look at him smile. Immediately. He's going to come up this way. He's going to be loving that. I wouldn't mind putting hands on him too.

Yeah, well, but obviously you've got to recognize that he's a good fighter. That's why you want to fight him. You're not dismissing him. You're like, oh, I like to fuck that guy up. Because you recognize that he's a good fighter. That's why you want to fight him. You're not dismissing him. You're like, I don't like to fuck that guy up. Because you realize that he's elite. Douglas Lima, one of the best 170-pounders in the world. Man, that guy's a fucking beast. Musashi.

Gegard Musashi's a fucking animal, man. He's so good. So there's real good talent over there. And I think that's good for everybody. I think it's good for the UFC. I think it's good for... The bigger the PFL grows, the bigger one grows. It's better for everybody. It's better for the sport.

You know, the sport – but at the end of the day, the UFC is the UFC. And that's – you know, it's the NFL of the sport. It's like if you think about MMA, you think about who's the UFC champ, and then you think, well, there's some great fighters in other organizations too, but the UFC is without a doubt the number one. But I think that's good for everybody. I don't think there's anything wrong with recognizing all these other elite fighters in the rest of the sport.

I think it's good. Especially when they come across like Chandler did. Yes. That's really cool. It's fucking good, man. I mean, knocks out Dan Hooker in one round. Holy shit. You know Hooker.

He's fucking good. He's a problem. He almost did it to Oliveira. Oliveira came out and did it to him. That was a crazy fight. Woo! A lot happened in that short amount of time, Mike. Yeah, it's hard to keep up.

The sport is so wild now. I mean, there's just so many fights like that. Like Usman Masvidal, the second fight, when Usman knocks him out. Who expected that? You know, it's just like these fucking guys are so good. And everybody's getting better. It's like the level. And because of guys like you and Max and an Usman and and all these fucking elite guys

And all of era all these elite guys like Everybody's getting better. It's like the level the sport is rising I love it cuz that's that's motivating right because I look at that as I go and what I know now won't be enough in a Couple of months right I need to keep learning I need to keep you I need to keep evolving the sports evolving I need to keep evolving and be a step. I want to keep learning. I need to keep evolving. The sport's evolving. I need to keep evolving and be a step ahead. I want to be a step ahead. You know what I mean? I need to keep evolving with it.

So that motivates me. I was like, fuck yeah, let's go. Let's go. Let's fucking go. Well, listen, thank you gentlemen for being here. Alex, you know I'm a fan. I love it. I love when you fight.

Can't wait to see you in there. Whatever the date is, whenever it's announced, we'll make sure we blow it up, you and Ortega. And this Friday I'm going to be there to see your match. Who are you competing against again? Luis Panza. So obviously filling in Gordon. This is the guy that Gordon was supposed to fight.

Exactly, yeah. So it'll be cool. You'll be there. Alex Jones. Alex Jones will be in your corner. Alex Jones, I'm going to make it happen. He's getting in the corner. I want to drunk Alex Jones in the corner too.

Oh, you don't want to drunk Alex Jones in the corner. Maybe you do. He did ask me to choke in the corner, too. Oh, you don't want a drunk Alex Jones in the corner. Maybe you do. He did ask me to choke him out yesterday, but I didn't do it. Yeah, everybody choke him out. So that's on flowgrappling.com. If you're not a member, you should subscribe. It's awesome. There's so many good matches you can watch on there,

and they consistently hold these high-level matches at Who's Number One in Austin. They have them once a month towards the end of the month. Went to it last time. They consistently hold these high-level matches at Who's Number One in Austin. They have them once a month towards the end of the month. Went to it last time. I've gone to the last two here. It's incredible. And so that's flowgrappling.com, and that will be available Friday.

And subscribe. It's not expensive. And if you're a supporter of jiu-jitsu, it's definitely worth it. What is your Instagram handle again? Alex Volkanovski. Alex Volkanovski. Alex Volkanovski. And yours is Craig Jones BJJ. That's it, yeah. That's it, all right.

Bye, everybody. All right. See ya. Hey, nothing but love till I take it, you piece of shit. Ha ha ha ha ha.