The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #111 with John Danaher

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Joe is joined by the legendary jiu jitsu coach and founder of the Danaher Death Squad, John Danaher.

the Joe Rogan experience so one of the best things about this who's number one thing is that I get to see you once a month thank you I've been enjoying it man we've had some wonderful conversations and I not get you in here, and let's put one of these down on recording. Thank you. My pleasure. This idea, this concept is so fantastic to me, to take elite grapplers and pay them for matches, and then stream it online, and Flow Grappling is doing this, and they're very successful. A lot of jiu-jitsu people are tuning into these things this and they're very successful a lot a lot of jiu-jitsu people are tuning into these things and and you know it's it's really become a hit

um a true key in the development of any sport is some kind of uh organization which showcases it uh for mixed martial arts it was the ufc and grappling always struggled with the idea of showcasing the skills of the athletes. There were local shows when you and I started, you did see those crazy local shows where people would just informally come in and compete against each other. But there was nothing that had any kind of overall vision or sustained program over time. And that, I believe, is what flow grappling is trying to do here. They're trying to give something, a grappling version of what the UFC has done for mixed martial arts. And the athlete pay is improved dramatically over earlier years. And athlete exposure is massively improved.

So it's a very encouraging thing. And the production's excellent. Yes. It's really good. It's great commentary. It's something where you could take someone who didn't know much about grappling, a friend of yours, invite them over,

watch it together, and they'll be like, hey, that's an impressive sport. As you say, the production looks like it's a legitimate sport as opposed to going to the local high school on a Saturday and watching you compete in that fashion. Well, one of the things that's made the sport more palatable is the approach that your athletes take and many other athletes are following suit is that it's a very submission-based approach instead of just trying to score points. points because I think there's been a problem with these rule sets where, I mean, even though Abu Dhabi's done an amazing job of showcasing elite grapplers, there's something weird about their score system. So the first, was it first five minutes, there's no points scored?

That's correct, yes. And then the next five minutes you score points. So you get guys stalling out for five minutes. So you almost guarantee a boring five minutes unless you have some sort of Marcelo Garcia attacker who just dives on submissions and goes after it right away, which is not the norm. The norm is points-based guys who are just trying to win. That's correct. As a general rule, athletes are smart and they want to win. So they will, as a general rule, always try to find the least risky way of attaining victory and doing the minimum amount of work in order to get to a win. And yet the spectators are demanding something else. They're demanding entertainment. And in the sport of jiu-jitsu, the most entertaining thing

you can do is to push the action towards submission holds. And submissions function in grappling the same way a knockout punch does in boxing. And it's the most desired result. It's also the most impressive result. If you think, Joe, back to when you first started jiu-jitsu, what was its primary appeal? Well, I think for the overwhelming majority of practitioners of jiu-jitsu, it was the idea of submission. I think that's the only appeal. I don't think you could ever say anybody,

I find it appealing to win on points. Yeah, or even worse on advantage. Yeah, just wrestle if you want to do that. When you look at jiu-jitsu, what makes it remarkable is the idea that it's a form of grappling where the outcome is determined in a way which it's understandable to anyone. It's surrender. You make someone surrender to you.

Like as impressive as judo, wrestling are as sports, the mechanism by which they win, in judo's case, the Ippon throw, they do have submissions in judo, but they're much less emphasized. And in wrestling at pin, they're not as decisive. It's easy to imagine someone who got pinned with their shoulders on the mat for three seconds but came back to win the fight. That's not a difficult thing to conceive of. It's easy to conceive of someone who got thrown pretty hard

and still kept fighting and won. But when you surrender, that's you saying, I quit. It's over. And that's the most definitive form of victory possible in any form of grappling. And that, I think, was the true appeal of jiu-jitsu. The further you get away from the idea that jiu-jitsu is about control leading to submission, the less interesting the sport becomes. And we must do as much as possible to push athletes towards that form of, that expression of jiu-jitsu. Don't just win by the minimum amount to get the job done, but go the

extra distance and try to win by submission. Now, you just mentioned the name of Marcelo Garcia. He was one of a handful of athletes. You see Hodger, Gracie was another, who at a time when the rule set didn't demand it, went out of their way to go the extra distance and fight from beginning to end for submission and what do you notice about those athletes they're legends they're legends they're loved to a degree which all those other athletes and don't forget they both lost okay they both had their losses they weren't undefeatable but they're legends because of the way they fought as much as for the victories themselves. Yeah, they represented true jiu-jitsu.

They represented the ideal of control to submission. And there's a sense in which athletes have to understand if you want to build a brand in jiu-jitsu, you can't just go with that minimalist approach of do enough to win, be happy with that. And you have to go into expressing the ideal of jiu-jitsu. Now, the natural response on the part of many organizers is to try and create rules which force athletes against their will to go the extra distance. That was the intention in ADCC, the Abu Dhabi approach. They took away points in the first five minutes so that athletes would be encouraged to go for submission holds. Now, some of them were, but as you correctly pointed out, most of them weren't. They actually

used it not as a means of encouraging submission, but actually avoiding any form of contact and making for a very boring first five minutes in many cases. So what I truly believe is that there's never going to be a rule set which forces athletes towards submission. The way it's going to change is through culture. It's got to come, I believe, from coaches creating a culture where athletes strive for a higher ideal in jiu-jitsu, which is control to submission rather than minimum advantage or points to score a win and be happy. It's got to come from a training room culture rather than rules. culture rather than rules. A good athlete can always game the rules to get the minimum method of victory. There's always a way. Just as a lawyer will find any interpretation of a law

in order to get the result they seek, so too an athlete can find any interpretation of the rules to get to the minimum win. So it's not going to come from rules. They've tried in the past and it just hasn't worked. In fact, it's actually had some negative connotations, as you pointed out. So it's got to come from a training room culture, and that's what I try to do with my squad. When you see rule sets like EBI where they put people in particular positions like back mount or spider web, armbar defense. What do you think about that approach, about going to a certain amount of time and then, see, the pro and con

is the pro is you're forced to, you're in a real bad situation from the jump, either back mount or armbar defense. The con is that you didn't really get there. You kind of got forced into that position, which is very odd for someone who has insane defense and they never get their back taken. And all of a sudden you start out with hooks in, you know, arm across and ready, go. And then you have to fight your way out of it. What do you feel about those? It was a fascinating rule set. It's actually the rule set by which the squad originally made their name long before their successes in ADCC. Unfortunately, it too runs into problems with athletes gaming the system. There's a trend among many athletes now just to stall for the entire 10 minutes of regulation, knowing that they've spent most of their training

resources on the overtime and they can win in the overtime. So it creates the same sense in which the athletes won't engage. I was always very proud of the fact that I had three athletes, Gary Tonin did it twice actually, Eddie Cummings and Gordon Ryan, who achieved a 100% success rate in regulation time. I believe they were the only athletes who ever achieved that. In other words, they didn't see overtime as a desirable thing. They all considered overtime as kind of like, you failed. If you had to get to overtime, it was failure. Whereas many of the athletes now see overtime as the best strategy to win. Avoid contact for 10 minutes then try to win in overtime.

So unfortunately even EBI runs into the same problem of athletes gaming the system. And so I'll just repeat my point that at the end of the day it doesn't matter what system you offer. People will find a way to use the rules to their advantage and that ultimately the solution lies not in rules people will find a way to use the rules to their advantage. And that ultimately the solution lies not in rules, but in the training culture and the gyms that you come from. Ideally, in my opinion, a no time limit submission match is the way to go.

That's the way you find out. Unfortunately, it's impractical as a TV event. But I couldn't agree more. There's no more definitive result than a no time a match there's it's hard to argue with the result i feel like it's it's it's not good for tv but we're not on tv we're streaming it's no different than a podcast in my opinion like if someone if i went to a television network and said i have this idea i want to have these three hour conversations with kind of people. Well, one day I'm going to have a jujitsu coach

and the other day I'm going to have a scientist and get the fuck out of here. That's not going to work. That's true. But it will work if it's good. And I feel that with streaming and jujitsu. I feel like if you got Gordon Ryan and Cyborg to agree to a match,

say Gordon's healthy again, why would you have a time limit on that? I want to see that play out. You're talking to someone who agrees with you. I know I am. I will try and play devil's advocate from the point of view of the producers of a show. They run multiple matches per show. Good. Do it all day.

Start at 5 p.m. Run that pitch till midnight. Let's see what's up. Yeah. It's a tough one in terms of like, you know, how are you going to get the warmups done? Like, I don't know.

This match in front of me could be four hours long. That's true. When do I begin my warm-up for the next match? Well, I think the way you do it is you have time limits for the preliminary bouts. But then when you get to the big fights, when you get to the, like... This, I believe, could be practical. It could be practical. You could have, for example, five fights prior with a 10, 15, 20-minute time limit. And then the last one of the night is no time

limit. Ideally, how much time does an athlete need to get to warm up? It depends on the athlete, but you'd want at least 15 minutes as an absolute minimum. So that seems doable. And it seems like you kind of achieve a mild state of warming up, just light jumping rope and just sort of just kind of like flow a little bit while it's happening while the match is happening you know maybe eat a little bit of fruit and just prepare yourself it could happen at any moment or it could happen an hour from now yes um it would have some interesting effects on pacing of the matches um there's basically two ways you can go you can say yourself, there's no time limit.

So one of us is going down. So I might as well go maximum intensity. And I either finish this guy in 10 minutes or I get finished in 25 when I'm exhausted. Or the two athletes pace themselves over time and work and work and work until a decisive moment is reached one hour one and a half hours in um i remember when gordon uh fought keenan cornelius in a no time limit match relatively early in his career um there was a fairly low pace of action it wasn't as it wasn't a boring match but it was slow paced for a reason both athletes were smart neither one had ever lost in a no time limit match previously. And one of them had to go down. And ultimately, it worked into a very, very slow, long match of around one and a half hours, I believe, until Gordon won by submission.

One and a half hours. Wow. I love it. I love that. We would love it. Love it. It would be tough to explain to a complete beginner. Yeah. But maybe not have that for a complete beginner. Maybe, you know, that's like the King of Kings. Let's, let's see what's up. Let's get it. I remember I read a story about, uh, when Mark Schultz first rolled with Hicks and Gracie and he put Hicks in, in a cradle for an hour really yeah that's amazing he just had him in the cradle and just was hanging on to him and it fucking lasted forever I don't know if it's true but I remember reading that and just imagining Hickson just breathing his breathing exercise

just waiting and Hickson eventually got out and strangled him amazing but it took a while yeah you know Mark was a freak he was a great athlete I mean he was an amazing wrestler when you see him you ever see the video of him I forget I think it was a man from Iran or Turkey I forget who the guy was oh you're talking about the Kimura 1984 Olympics yeah he fought the the Turkish athlete I believe that Turk was actually the favorite he was the world champ from the previous year, I believe And uh, yeah, he legitimately broke his arm with kimura. Yeah, he tore it apart

Yeah, I mean it was a see if you can find that because it's pretty wild. I mean it first of all, he's just a ball of muscle I mean mark schultz in his prime was a fucking savage. I understand He was actually a gymnast before he was a wrestler i believe it and he started wrestling relatively late his brother dave started much earlier than him wow and uh and convinced him to try it um his uh his athleticism was fucking ridiculous and really unfortunate that um brigham young university would not let him compete that's in the UFC yeah that one fight is which is one of the things that infuriates me to no end about the movie

about his life story because in the movie about his life story he faces a Russian guy in this one cage fight that he has but it's a it's a part of mixed martial arts history that he fought Big Daddy Goodrich. Yes. Big Daddy comes out with the karate gi on. Big Daddy was a big giant striker. He wasn't a Russian. He was a Canadian, actually. What was the motivation for them changing history?

Assholes. Assholes in Hollywood who just decide that they want to put their own spin on things. Let's make it a Russian guy. For no fucking reason, they changed this man's life story for no reason makes no sense makes no sense Cold war is over at that point But not only that there's no pro or con to doing it. There's no you're just changing history imagine if instead of Reggie Jackson hitting home runs for the Yankees you just had put in in some other random person. Like, why would you do that? Like, history is history.

Martial arts history is no different than football history or baseball history. It's fucking history. You can't change it. You're doing a movie on a man's life story. And if you're going to change that, like, I mean, it was an important moment in terms of mixed martial arts. But for his life, it's really not important that, you know you know he fought this guy but that's who he fought it's what it is yeah if you change that what other important moments of his life did you lie about true what are the weird shit did you change yeah because you just

once you lose credibility in one area it's open see I mean it was the reason why I say it's not important because it, because it was a walkthrough for him. He just took Big Daddy down, beat him up. It was a very impressive match. Very impressive. Yeah. I mean, he's an insane wrestler. He was so good.

Just took him down at will, anytime he wanted to. And I think he could have done that to virtually everybody in the division. And he probably could have been a world champion. But they will never know, because they never let him fight again. But the fact that they change the opponent, and they just made up some random guy, it doesn't make any sense. What else did you lie about? Because you lied about that. Because now I've got to look at that whole movie.

Is this movie real? What is this movie? I know DuPont killed his brother. I know that for a fact. But all the other stuff, did you just make up? The fuck did you do here? It just infuriates me. Yes, yes, this is it.

Watch this. So he dives in this Kimura and boom, just tears it apart, pins the guy, and tours. Now, what did they do? Did they disqualify him for that? If I remember correctly,

there was a weird rule where because it occurred early on in the matchups, I believe that was either his first or second match, you could be put back into the action despite either disqualification or a no result or something like that there was a the rules were quirky back then and I believe because it was early on in the in the Olympic roster he was allowed back into competition despite the disqualification yeah it says

somewhat graphic showing the Turks elbow being broken since the Turk cannot continue obviously Mark was still able to come away with the gold medal. This is commentary and then shows the move breaking the... Give me one more time on that. Let me see that one more time because it's fucking crazy. It's such an effective technique. It's, um... Oh, so they're going to show it in a slow-motion version here. It's funny, they're angled too, I think.

It's funny that this is illegal. For us, it's like, oh, perfect. Oh, my God. That is literally exactly like Minotauro and Frank Mir. Yes. Same break, upper arm break. Yeah. The Jacare Souza fight against Muniz from a couple weeks ago yes how

insane was that and amazing and again the bone breaking yeah and the the soft tissue of the elbow and so loud oh my god when I was in audible even as it happened you knew what it happened mm-hmm yeah have you seen a guy's arm break in that position yes yeah yeah the J Yeah. The jujigatami, the straight arm lock, is always compounded when the forearm is captured behind the back. It creates a much more efficient interplay between lever and fulcrum and much, much harder to twist out and deny the effects of leverage. And so you see some particularly nasty breaks with that version.

That one was scary to me because I was picturing, like, training room situations and I was like, that, like, there wasn't a lot of time to tap there. Yeah, yeah. It happened pretty quickly. Yeah. Anytime you start with the arm captured behind the back, the arm's already extended when the lock begins. behind the back, the arm's already extended when the lock begins.

And the degree of safety in any joint lock is always reflected by the degree to which the joint is already close to breaking point at its inception. So, for example, normally when you get attacked in Jujutsu Kata, your hands are locked offensively. So there's a 90-degree bend in your arm. So there's a long range of motion before threatening any form of catastrophic damage. But when the arm is trapped behind the back, you already start with a straight arm. And so any small movement forward will take it into the breaking zone. See if you can find that. I don't know if the UFC has pulled that offline. Do they have that? It's got to be somewhere. Someone must have put it on on YouTube it's very interesting and what's interesting is Muniz said before the

fight that he believed he had a grappling advantage over Jacques Array which is thing wild talk right that's wild talk talk is one thing justification is another what was his reasoning for saying that well I don't make the statement or did he argue for it well Well, I am not aware of his grappling credentials. I really didn't know too much about him other than watching some highlights online. But Alex Davis, who I have a lot of respect for, he said to me after the fight, he's like, I'm telling you, this guy is a fucking freak. He's like, he's incredible. He's a really talented grappler.

Interesting. And when you see the the just first of all the is took down Jacare at will multiple times so let's see if we'll see you here again oh bring it back all the way to the beginning oh my goodness bring it back all the way to the beginning that snap is so loud yeah that is a horrific sound I admire Jacare stoicism man yes impressive oh yeah he smiled he said good job to the guy afterwards hugged him with his left I mean pretty crazy but that man is he's got a bright future and that's a crazy division right there too I mean it's been any talk of his next fight no I mean no it just happened so we'll see

yeah I mean right now the the title fight is two weeks from today or two weeks from tomorrow Israel Adesanya and Martin Vittori Marvin Vittori rather have to fight again. They have a rematch of a very difficult fight that happened for Israel's first fight in the UFC. Interesting. Vittori's a beast, man. He's a very dangerous guy.

Really well-rounded. How long ago since the first fight? I want to say 2017, if I remember correctly. There's both athletes who changed it on. I think it was 17, 17 or 18. Not that long ago. Israel's rise to the throne has been pretty spectacular. It was very fast.

I mean, I think he was three years in, he was a champ. April 2018. 18, okay. And so that was, Marvin's a fucking tough guy, a really difficult guy to handle because he can do everything. He's a good wrestler. He's a good striker. He comes from King's MMA, so Rafael Cordero trains him, you know, really well-versed. So he's a tough guy.

Yeah. But that was a superb break oh and uh spectacular i must watch that guy in the future yeah i mean that there's just so much talent now in the ufc and it's you know talent it's it's mixed martial arts talent that is uh to me it, it's so hard to put it all together. You know, you have these elite kickboxers, you have these elite grapplers, but to see someone put it all together inside the cage in mixed martial arts competition, it's so interesting. So many variables at play.

There's something like that fight. You know, Jacare was fucking him up standing up. And he just figured his way out and took the most unlikely path to success against a super accomplished world champion grappler. Yeah, Jacare's as good as they get. Yeah. And perhaps some of the answer comes from what you just said, the idea that Jacare was dominating the standing striking. That probably clues you into the fact that over the last few years, the absolute majority of his training has been in standing striking.

That's why you see the significant improvements and possibly at the detriment of his grappling. Yeah. That could be a problem, right? Always remember that skills are perishable. Very perishable. Yeah. that skills are perishable, very perishable. And as you focus on one thing,

it always comes at the price of your earlier skills, and you'd be horrified at how quickly, in a very competitive environment, skills that you don't maintain don't last very long. I remember that with elite wrestlers, like elite guys like Josh Koschek, as he started really only concentrating on his striking. He suddenly started down yes yeah it's kind of crazy right because you think like hey you know multiple time champion wrestling you know division one all-american no one's taking me

down right and then you get out there and all of a sudden a guy like George St. Pierre didn't even wrestle in high school could take you down. Exactly, yeah. Weird. It's not even a question of your skills diminishing. It's a question of your skills diminishing as another person's skills are rising. Yeah. So you get that double effect. So if your skills drop 10% while the other guy's skills rise 60%, that compounded effect of your downward trajectory and their upward trajectory that can cause problems in a fight. That's why it's so fascinating to see different athletes

approaches to mixed martial arts because it's so open-ended. Some athletes have a very grappling heavy style. Some athletes have a very striking heavy style. And like, what do you concentrate on? What do you say if you're a guy like George who really can do everything? Like, how do you, how do you determine like how much striking to do versus how much grappling to do? How do you determine what to focus on the most? Is it based on opponents? In George's case, it was almost always based on opponents because George had such a well-measured skill set that you could tailor his skill set to a given opponent. If you are much more, as it were, fixed in one skill set, you can't tailor your skill set to an opponent. when a very, very jiu-jitsu heavy athlete like Damien Maia fights. All of his fights look essentially the same.

It's jiu-jitsu 101 regardless of who his opponent is. It doesn't matter whether he's a grappler. The way he will fight a grappler is identical to the way he will fight a striker. With George, you had the luxury of being able to tailor exactly how he would fight per opponent, whereas someone who comes from a single discipline has to play more or less the same game regardless of who they match themselves against.

Do you remember when Damian Maia had Kamaru Usman's back standing and they separated him? Yes, yeah. I was throwing shit at the TV watching that the other day. Going, what the fuck? Because I remember it at the time and then I remember watching it again. Because Damien finished a lot of people in that position. And it was dry and it was early.

And it's like, why would you separate them? I think if you're gonna have five minute rounds which is so short in terms of grappling right and craig jones argued this yesterday like how hard it is to finish a guy who doesn't even want to engage if you're just you know you only have five minutes you should have no stand-ups ever i i couldn't agree more people get mad at me they go boo that's boring but if you can't get up you shouldn't get up if a guy can take you down and hold you down tough shit I'm my bias is always towards as little referees intervention as possible might as well and unfortunately that's very much the

minority of you I've seen people get stood up from side control, which is crazy. That is just, it's so hard to get someone in side control. And you only have a few minutes to work and you hear the referee going, let's work, let's work. I don't know if it's referees with no grappling understanding, if they don't really understand

how difficult it is to advance position and to finish someone, or if they're just playing to the crowd's cheers and boos. I think unquestionably it's got to be tough when you just hear an entire audience booing just to stick to your guns and say, let them go. You've got to get used to it. Yeah. Yeah, you've just got to get used to it.

I mean, that's part of the job. But I couldn't agree more. The less referees intervention, the better. And that way you get a much more honest assessment of the outcome. In every sense, even pressed up against the cage. When a guy's got a guy pressed up against the cage and he's just holding him there, get out. Get out of there.

You don't like it there? Get out of there. Or don't get out. But this is how it's playing out. And people say it's boring. You fucking watch baseball. You watch baseball and you think that's boring at any moment someone could do a spinning elbow and knock someone unconscious 100% yeah

why how could that possibly be boring and if it is boring then next time that guy fights you should hope that he gets paired up with someone who's crazy some some wild guy looks like Prohoshka or something like that who just charges out of the gate guns blazing and tries to take him out. Let's see what happens then. Yes. No, you're absolutely right. Even in the situations like the fence is usually described as the most boring part of mixed martial arts. You try something on the fence, nothing happens.

But you've seen on multiple occasions both the person being pinned on the fence and the person pinning the other person have achieved knockouts with with as you described by spinning elbows or short elbows you've seen it so many times anything can happen at any time so just let them go let them go yeah and if it turns out to be boring we already know that athletes that are not exciting and don't do well they're not as marketable they don't do as well financially. That's just how it goes. And their incentive to be more exciting, either they ignore it completely and just concentrate on winning like so many of them do, or they just decide to make their style a little bit more open, a little bit more wild, take some more chances. The way to think about it is don't let the boos of the crowd incentivize the athletes to

attack. Let the eyes of the crowd incentivize the athletes to attack. Because if you're boring, the next time they're not going to watch you. Yes. Yeah. Let them select on their own. Don't listen to boos. Watch where their eyes are going. If you're an exciting fighter, you're going to have eyes on the screen looking at you. That should be your incentive to action, not the boos of the crowd. When you're training athletes for jujitsu, and one of the interesting things about the Gordon Ryan conversation that I had recently, I didn't know that you are Gary Tonin's striking coach as well. Oh, yeah. Pretty amazing that you can do both, that you can train them in both jiu-jitsu and also train them in striking.

And I know you have a background in striking, but still. When you're training an athlete like Gary, if you're training someone like Gordon for jiu-jitsu, I'm sure there's some emphasis on takedowns, but it's not a primary concern the primary concern is submissions right like the oftentimes you see Gordon will sit pull guard all these things that are not possible in MMA or very rare what how much of a shift is it to train them for mixed

martial arts because you're clearly training him to strike and training him to strike, but ultimately the skill set, the best part of their skill set involves in submission. That's correct. The big challenge for most jiu-jitsu players when they try to apply their craft in mixed martial arts is one, can they get it to the ground? That's a challenge in itself. And an even greater challenge is, can you keep it on the ground? It means nothing if you take someone down, if they just spring back up within three to five seconds.

It's energy spent that had no reward. A sad thing about jiu-jitsu is that when it's practiced, there's almost always a kind of gentleman's agreement that there's going to be a top player and a bottom player. And if you start in the bottom, you stay in the bottom. The moment you get into a mixed martial arts context, that goes right out the window. And now you have two responsibilities. You don't just have to pass your opponent's guard from top position. You have to hold him down while you're doing it.

And that's not easy. When you look at the notion of escape in jiu-jitsu, the overwhelming majority of escapes in the sport of jiu-jitsu are escapes to guard position. If you're mounted, you elbow escape, you put him back in guard. If the guy's got side pin on you, you elbow escape, put him back in guard. If the guy's behind you, you do a forward roll, spin back into him, put him back in guard. 90% of the escapes in jiu-jitsu are escapes back to guard position. And so when you start in bottom position, you tend to stay in bottom position. Now contrast to stay in bottom position. Now contrast that with the sport of wrestling, where the overwhelming majority of escapes are escapes to standing back up to a neutral position on your feet.

That means that when jiu-jitsu players face other forms of grappling, they're not trying to put us back in guard. They're trying to stand up. And jiu-jitsu players never practice against that when they're doing their daily training. And so suddenly you've got a guy who just assumes for his entire career that if he's on top, the other guy's going to play guard. And this guy's not playing guard at all. He's just pushing your head, standing up and hip-fising up to his feet. The jiu-jitsu guy's like, well, I had top position. Why aren't you playing guard? And so they're now put into an area where nothing in their training has really prepared them for this. And jiu-jitsu is going to have to mature.

I've always said jiu-jitsu is one of the greatest products I ever saw in my life. I wouldn't have invested 30 years of my life into jiu-jitsu if I didn't believe that with all my heart and all my soul. But like any great product, it has its deficiencies. Jiu-jitsu always had three major deficiencies. Leg locks, takedowns, and thirdly, the one that no one talks about, the ability to impose top position once it's gained. the ability to impose top position once it's gained. A huge part of my career has been the recognition and the attempt to change these three great faults in jiu-jitsu. As much as I love jiu-jitsu,

we've got to take a step back and take an honest look at it. It's got these three deeply entwined faults within it. Leg locks was the most obvious one. In a game which was supposedly all about control leading to submission, there was an arbitrary rule that 50% of the body couldn't be attacked. That was lunacy. And over the last 10 years, I believe it's fair to say we've reached a point where that is no longer the case, that that is a great weakness within jiu-jitsu. The younger generation of jiu-jitsu, I would match them against any grappling out in the world on leg locks with no fear whatsoever. I couldn't have said that 15 years ago, but things have changed. Now we need to address the other two great weaknesses.

But things have changed. Now we need to address the other two great weaknesses. Jiu-jitsu has to do something about the crisis which is starting to emerge around takedowns and the ability to impose top position. What you're seeing among jiu-jitsu athletes now who go into mixed martial arts is they just have to turn to other arts. They have to learn wrestling. They have to learn these. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the truth is that jiu-jitsu has become a smaller and smaller component of mixed martial arts rather than what it was when it first started, which is a dominant force in

mixed martial arts. Now, for most of the athletes, jiu-jitsu is something you learn to stay out of some pesky submission holds. It's not the be-all and focus for most of the athletes in mixed martial arts. Most of them are centered around kickboxing skills and wrestling. I think that we have done a great job of overcoming one out of three great problems in jiu-jitsu, but there's still two more to go. I don't believe it's a satisfactory answer. I believe it's a cop-out to say, well, just learn some wrestling. it's a satisfactory answer. I believe it's a cop-out to say,

we'll just learn some wrestling. Just as many people told me 20 years ago, oh, you want to learn leg locks? Just do some samba. I was never happy with that answer. That's why I didn't do it. Okay, first of all, samba as a sport doesn't even allow heel hooks. It only allows straight leg locks,

knee bars and Achilles locks. There's no heel hooks in competition Samba. And so if I had just taken that approach of learning other martial arts, learning leg locks from that, the whole heel hook revolution never would have taken off. Where did the heel hook originate from? Originate? I can't give an accurate answer.

When I began Jiu- judo in the 1990s most of the early people I saw employing employing heel hooks were from Japan people like Romina Sato in Manari in Manari is a little bit after Sato but yeah he was definitely one of them and so it's tough to say where its origins are. There's no mention of it in judo textbooks. The one leg lock they mention is just a hackneyed version of a knee reap. Not very effective. Is it possible that it's a catch wrestling technique?

It's possible. That's a lot of what came to Japan, right? Yeah. It's possible. That's a lot of what came to Japan, right? Yeah. But then it's the history of catch wrestling. I'm no expert in it, but there's so many competing points of views and there's so little reliable information.

There's very little video or photographs which definitively show the application of them. They do this video footage of Elio Gracie demonstrating a heel hook. It's not a particularly well-applied heel hook, but it is recognizably a heel hook. So it seems that they did know about it. And this is from the 20s or 30s? No, I'm guessing by his age this would be like 70s. He looked pretty old when he was doing it.

So it appears that there was knowledge of it. But as to its origins, I can't give you any accurate statement on that. I can't give you any evidence-based statements. It's a really good question. When was it first applied in competition on a large scale? It's a really good question. When was it first applied in competition on a large scale? But I've never seen any compelling evidence to say this is the first examples.

For example, the triangle, stranglehold, there's very strong evidence to suggest that its origins are shortly before the First World War. There appears to have been no use of the triangle prior to that. So we do have a pretty good idea that the triangle stranglehold started sometime around 1910 to 1913 in Japan. There seems to be no evidence of triangles used before that. There's no mention of them in Greek textbooks of pancreation or anything. What art was it used in in Japan? In judo competition. That's an interesting thing because Maeda was from a generation, he left Japan, so he's

from a generation of judo players that didn't know the triangle. So when he went to Brazil and taught, he didn't teach the triangle because he'd never learned it. He left before 1910. That's why the triangle was only part of jiu-jitsu in the 1970s. Really? Yes, it's an odd history. So when Elio was young, there was no triangle?

There was no triangle. Wow. I believe the story is that Holes Gracie had a student who read a judo book and saw a triangle and showed it to Holes, and Holes brought it into the Gracie family. I believe that's the story. But Maeda left Japan before the triangle was invented. And so it was never part of his instruction.

That's incredible. Yeah. Now what about the Kimura? Because the Kimura that was the- This is very old. Double wrist lock? Yeah. You see old drawings and renditions of it from medieval times.

And I also believe not only in Japan, but also in other cultures as well. So this one's pretty clear. Interesting, though, that they named it after a guy who beat Elio. Only the Brazilians name it that. The Japanese call it Urigurami. Okay. So they have their own name for it. So only the Brazilians call it Kimura.

But we all call it Kimura now. I mean it's kind of universal. The Brazilians. If I was doing commentary and I said, he's got a double wrist lock, people would go, what are you saying? That's true. Imagine if you said Urigurami,

they'd freak out on you. Well you love all those Japanese names. Jujigatami, you love all that stuff, right? I like to give credit where it's due. And these old masters were remarkable people, remarkable people. And, you know, you can still see old black and white footage of Judo masters like Oda teaching. And they had some pretty advanced stuff. Some of it was really impressive.

Yes. And so when it's applicable, I like to give credit. Now, I don't always do it. I use the term Kimura. So you're probably asking, well, why don't you use all Japanese terms? Why only some? Well, there's practical considerations too. The Japanese call Kimura Urigurami. Now, in a crowded auditorium when my athlete's competing, I can't use the name Udigurami because it sounds too much phonetically like Ashigurami. So if I call out Udigurami when you've got thousands of people screaming, then my athlete might mishear me. So I use Kimura because

phonetically it's so different that there's no confusion. So there's also practical elements too. Some of the Japanese names are too long. For example, Udigurami has two variations where one is up the American lock and down, which we call Kimura. And the Japanese term doesn't distinguish between the two. You have to use a much longer terminology in order to make that distinction. It's too long. I can't call out a four-word phrase. By the time I've relayed the message, the opportunity is gone. So there's practical considerations

in the use of names as well. Wasn't the Americana, that was another thing. Holes was famous for applying that as well. I believe. Bringing that to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah, I believe the idea of, first of all, it's a strange thing to call it Americana. I believe it was named after an American wrestler who used to visit or train with halls who used to use it a lot. And so they,

they named an American was using it. So they call it Americana. I could be wrong about that, but I believe that's the, that's the legend. It's so fascinating that although martial arts have been around for so long, so many thousands of years, that we can really trace very recent spectacular progress. Like from 1993, from the original UFC to 2021 where we're at today, UFC to 2021 where we're at today, what a spectacular explosion of ability, of innovation, of just the level of technique is so much higher than it ever was before. I don't think there's another thing like it in terms of athletics. If you look at any other sport, there's incremental increases in the abilities of the athletes, but nothing comparable to martial arts. I'm so glad you said this because

we're very privileged to live as martial artists in this age. This is, in my opinion, is the most exciting time for a martial artist to be alive that I'm aware of. Maybe in ancient Greece, maybe they had something with pancreation that was more exciting than this. You'd have to show me some pretty damn good evidence. If you could take Gordon Ryan and bring him back to ancient Greece, he would fuck those dudes up.

Do you know how easy it would be? Do you know how amazing it would be? All those guys would line up, bring their champions, and they'd be like, what is he doing? In general, I would agree with you. As a general rule, I believe that later generations almost always beat earlier generations.

Like Jesse Owens was a great sprinter, but Usain Bolt would destroy him in a foot race. There's just no getting around that. The only place where I make exceptions is boxing. Because I think there are boxers from the old era that just would be spectacular no matter what. I think Muhammad Ali would be, especially when he was Cassius Clay before he was stripped of his title, you take the guy who beat Cleveland Big Cat Williams, and I think he boxes with almost anybody of any era.

I think he's just amazing. Marvin Hagler. I think you could take Marvin Hagler, stick him in with any middleweight champion of all time in any era of boxing, and you're just dealing with a champion. I mean, just because there's not much difference in boxing. Like, you see some unique approaches like Floyd Mayweather and his shoulder roll

and his incredible defense, and you see it. We were talking before this podcast when we were talking about Canelo Alvarez, how he learned from the Floyd Mayweather fight. His head movement. And so you're seeing these steps where they're learning. But go back to Willie Pepp. Go back to Pernell Whitaker. I mean, Pernell Whitaker had spectacular defense. Agreed. Yeah.

I mean, I hear you, Joe. And I think there's some good arguments to suggest that you may be onto something here. Let's look, for example, at Sugar Ray Leonard versus Floyd Mayweather's father, which is a classic fight, by the way. Yes. Wonderful match. Amazing fight. Now, you get to see just how good Sugar Ray Leonard was in the 1980s with that match. Now, you could make the argument, as Sugar Ray Leonard does to this day, that Floyd Mayweather isn't that much better than his father was,

that they're of comparable skill level. And you could argue on that basis, exactly as you said, that maybe some of those guys from the 1980s would have gone against the best guys of this generation and done just fine. The difficulty, of course, is it's difficult to measure combat sports. In the case of Olympic sprinting, there's an obvious measurement here, time. And so you see the progress more clearly. Nonetheless, as a general rule, I do think even in combat sports, earlier generations tend to lose to later generations in most cases. There could be some exceptions, but I think, for example, if Kimura, who was the greatest judo player of his generation, went up against Yamashita, even if you took away the size difference, I just think Yamashita wins.

He just knows more. He's just had the benefits of the insights of one generation pile upon the next and the next and the next. They create a compounding effect in learning where the athletes from a later generation start from a higher point than their predecessors did. And so as a general rule, I'll always favor the more recent generations over previous generations. But to your credit, I do think there are some exceptions in combat sports more than other sports. I agree with you as a general rule. The exception I make is boxing.

The reason why I make that exception in boxing is because I don't think the progress has been as spectacular as it's been in martial arts. And I don't think the approach is as comprehensive as it is in grappling or clearly in mixed martial arts. In mixed martial arts, I don't think there's any argument whatsoever that 93 compared to, like, I was just watching one of the fights from the early UFCs. And it's almost comical, the difference in the level of skill today from just debut athletes that are just starting out. But boxing, if you take, like, the Roberto Duran who beat Sugar Ray Leonard at 147 pounds, which wasn't even his best weight class. His best weight class when he beat Ken Buchanan at 135 pounds. I mean, he was a savage. I mean, that lightweight Roberto

Duran is one of the greatest boxers that ever lived. But boxing is two hands, a variety of techniques applied in a bunch of different ways, but it's just two hands. You have defense that's applied in a bunch of different ways. You have an understanding of distance and timing and how to feint and throw that timing off and head movement and being able to anticipate which direction attacks are coming. All that stuff was already understood. It was already understood with Joe Lewis. It was already understood with Joe Louis. It was already understood with Sugar Ray Robinson. And it's just different approaches in terms of the ability to prepare an athlete,

more scientific approach in terms of nutrition, rest, recovery, all those different things. But there's something to be said for hard-nosed, disciplined, warrior training camps like the kind that Rocky Marciano used to go through, like the kind that Sugar Ray Robinson used to go through. I mean, these guys just – they were young enough so that they probably didn't apply the same sort of rules that strength and conditioning coach would apply today. But you guys don't apply those rules. You guys train seven days a week. So you guys fly in the face of that. It's true. There's something to be said for just hard work and discipline. I love the examples that you're using from boxing in terms of their conditioning program. If you look at the history of boxing, all of those boxers you mentioned grew up in a generation where the most important part of modern boxing was completely absent.

The most important part of modern boxing training is pad work. Ooh. When did they start pad work? I believe it was the early 1980s. Wow. So people like Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, never trained on pads. Isn't that crazy to think of?

Didn't even know what they were. So many of the greatest boxers of all time, Willie Pett, none of them trained on pads. You're blowing my mind because I never thought of that before. I literally never thought of that. Isn literally never thought of that isn't that fascinating that's so fascinating and yet now the majority of boxing training is done on the pads like it's a it's literally a revolution in boxing training and you've got to ask yourself what was the difference what did they do back then and you see there was

probably a lot more emphasis on sparring um that sparring was the focus. And heavy back work. Yeah. That's crazy. I wonder who was the first guy to figure out pads? It's a fascinating question. I've never seen a definitive answer to it. I literally never thought that until today, until right now.

Yeah. Like when was the first time or something? And the other big question you gotta ask yourself is, were Western boxers the first people to use pads, or was Thailand before them? Because they used their own version of pads for kicks. Did the Thais come first with kick pads, or did the Western boxing coaches come first with hand pads? These are both interesting questions, and I don't know the answer to either. It's a very good question.

It's interesting how the Thais sort of devised this strategy of training. It's a different strategy of training. You know, like they're all about, like the idea of training Thai without pads is like, it's alien. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think the idea of training boxing in 2020 without pads is also alien. Yeah. Well you know, Julio Cesar Chavez never hit the speed bag there's a foot there's a funny video of him trying to hit the speed bag he doesn't know how to do it and this was when he was the best in the world you mentioned some guy looking at me man that guy sucks okay look at him on the speed back but he doesn't know what he's doing he was

laughing about it he was going like yeah like I mean when you think about it what actual relationship between boxing punching as done in a fight and speed bag is there none and yet yeah and yet guys do that all day every day who punches anybody like this ever it's so strange it's just strange how did that become an institution we're weird didn't like, hey coach, I've never hit anyone like that in my life. Why are you making me do this? Yeah. I was just looking, that's all Rocky does in the thing. He only hits that and meat,

the rest of it he's not doing anything. Doesn't he hit a heavy bag? He's just, mom, meat in the meat locker, and then he's doing pushups and running. That's it. And sit-ups. Yeah. The meat thing. Terrible technique, Rocky.

It's funny. Go back and watch those old movies. They're like, hey, straighten that up, man. Come on. And yet those crazy old movies probably started more people boxing and doing martial arts than all of the technically perfect demonstrations of boxing technique technique and then actual sports i'm sure more people started boxing watching rocky than by watching roberto duran actually box that's absolutely true i'm sure i'm sure same thing

with blood sport and martial arts i mean you look at blood sport it's like a comedy show and yet how many people started out of blood sport more than than started by watching the UFC, I'm quite certain. Yeah. I think if you could go back in martial arts and trace what started more people in martial arts, I think it's Bruce Lee. I would think it's Bruce Lee. I think you might be right about that. Yeah, because that's what started me. Yeah.

I mean, I was throwing kicks and doing all that. Isn't that crazy? What year did you start martial arts? Well, I started fucking around when I was like 11-ish, somewhere around there. I took a kung fu class and I would like fuck around with my friends. What year are we talking about here? I started Taekwondo when I was 15, very seriously, like immediately seriously. Did you start because you had seen a Bruce Lee movie?

No. No. I started, I'd taken karate before then. I went to Joe Esposito's Karate Center in Newton, Massachusetts, and he was like a local, really well-known and respected karate guy. And I took his class when I was 14, but it was too hard to get over there. It was hard to get on the bus and it was complicated. But I went to a baseball game at Fenway Park with a friend of mine and we were headed home and there was a long line to get on the T because everybody would leave Fenway Park,

line to get on the t because everybody would leave fenway park mass exodus and all these people were on the public transportation and uh we decided to walk up the stairs to uh just check out this taekwondo school and uh as i was walking up the stairs i heard the sound and the sound was like whoop whoop whoop and the whomp was the kick hitting the bag and the kaching was the bag flying and snapping against the chains that were hanging from the wall it's impressive and there was a guy named John Lee who was the national champion at the time who was training for the World Cup and he was in his prime and he was a guy I learned from a lot i learned my turning sidekick from him i learned a lot of competition techniques from him i learned like i learned how to approach fighting because he was a ferocious guy just this guy from the streets of

chelsea which is like a really tough neighborhood and he was just this long tall guy with phenomenal power and i remember watching him kick the bag and bend it in half and i remember thinking fuck i want to learn how to do that i was obsessed like instantaneously obsessed i signed up right then and there and it changed my whole life i I never played baseball again. I was into baseball. Like I would play baseball in school, I would always play baseball. I was like fuck baseball.

I wanna do what that guy can do. I remember watching him hit that bag and it was like a fucking car accident. Every time he hit it, just whoop! And that bag would just bend in half and go flying and I was obsessed, obsessed obsessed I spent every day at that place from then on every day I was teaching there within a year impressive I was obsessed 15 15 wow yeah just full-on obsessed because I couldn't believe someone could do that I'd never seen

anybody kick a bag before ever and that particular school uh J. Kim Taekwondo Institute in Boston was very power oriented like there was a lot of schools back then that were about points and winning tournaments and winning the karate style point tournaments and winning Taekwondo tournaments on points it was about speed and movement and being able to hit someone quick and get out of there my instructors position was what good does it matter? Like, what good does it do you if you can win a tournament, but you can't even hurt someone on the street?

Like, you should be able to fight, and you should be able to learn how to fight. And so we did a lot of sparring with headgear and kickboxing, and it was a hard style. He was a hard man. And his approach was always power. He's like, I want you to kick them. So even if you kick them in their arms, they become terrified. I want you to hit them so hard that they know that any mistake they make is going to leave them unconscious.

So his approach was always about power. Like it was all power. So when I saw John Lee, who was probably like maybe like late 20s at the time in his prime just boom Benning that back. It was like to me. It was like a shot just a crazy drug like Instantaneously, I was obsessed. It was the perfect time because I could have gone up there and it could have been a child's class You know, I could have just walked up there and you know a bunch of people were doing forms I've been like this what is this nonsense? And I would have walked out of there.

But I literally walked in during the absolute perfect time. See this tall, long black belt just sending this bag into orbit. It was crazy. I'll never forget it. I think there's two important lessons from that. The first is that how you approach martial arts is a big part of their appeal. Just as we talked, the idea that submission is the universal appeal of jiu-jitsu. Yeah. In any kinetic energy-based martial art like taekwondo or karate or boxing or kickboxing,

that ability to just impart ferocious and intimidating kinetic energy onto a target is everything. Everything. That's their version of submissions. Just as submissions can snap an arm, they can put your lights out in a heartbeat with a good blow. That's their primary appeal. And I'm impressed by the fact that this guy identified what is the appeal. And it showed on you as a 15-year-old boy.

You looked at this and you're like, my God, I've got to learn this power. He not only imparted that on you, it was part of the way they marketed the class. So like the heavy bag was right near the lobby. So like there's a line of heavy bags. So as you walk in, there's this big training hall, but the heavy bags were right there. So if someone was coming in to go check out classes,

he would tell me to go kick the bag. yeah he would say go smash that bag that was the best advertising they oh yeah yeah because if you could watch someone do that it's undeniable you see the amount of force yeah the guy like John could generate and look at change him watching him change my life like you're looking at that bag you're saying like if that was me dead dead all this broken bleeding internally I'm just couldn't and he like if that was me dead dead all this broken bleeding internally I'm just couldn't and he was big he was a light heavyweight at the time which I think you know the weight classes are all a little bit different, but I think it was still somewhere in the range of

175 pounds and Just watching him do that Literally like here's my life. I'm going in this direction like this Hard right turn and then changed everything became a different person and that's the second thing that so much of what Determines the direction of our lives is completely accidental Yeah, and arbitrary like that was a life-changing moment for you. And as you said if you come 15 minutes earlier You and I probably wouldn't even be having this conversation.

You probably never would have gotten into martial arts. You'd be playing baseball. Isn't that nuts? Yeah. It's really crazy. That one day changed my whole life. But not just the day. 15 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, however long it took for that guy to start his workout. And then becoming friends with him and having him as a mentor and having him show me like different techniques and tricks that he had used.

And he was an interesting guy because just fucking loved fighting. Just loved it. Like right before he would go to fight, he would have this wild look in his eyes and everybody would watch him fight because he was so known for knocking people out because training under mr kim the the emphasis on power was so primary it was everything and john didn't care if you hit him a couple of times he was just always waiting always waiting for the opening man we had these team competitions where we'd be of like different weight classes of our team versus different weight classes of this other team. And we fought in this tournament,

and there was these guys, really high-level guys from Korea. And Korean guys were always scary because that's the motherland of Taekwondo. You'd see Korean national champions. They were so technical and so good and so fast. And I remember John was fightingarring, he was fighting in this tournament against this Korean guy. And he kept getting hit. He kept getting hit by this guy. The guy kept scoring on him and everybody was cheering and cheering. And you could see John just staying

calm, just waiting, just waiting, just waiting. And then there was this moment where he faked, the guy made a movement, the guy tried to charge. And John turned and hit him with that same kick and sent that dude crumbling and screaming in agony. Just, ah! And he just turned around and looked at me and raised his eyebrows. And he was laughing about it afterwards. He goes, I knew it was just time. I was just looking for the moment. I was just looking for the moment.

And he found it and it was just seeing him hit that bag and then being on the same team as him years later competing as a black belt and watching him do this to this national champion and sending this guy just crumbling to the ground just that that kind of ability obsessed me I just that's all I wanted to do was like he figure out how to kick someone like that that's all I wanted to do was like figure out how to kick someone like that that's all I wanted to do um probably the the single most impressive thing in in martial arts is the ability to finish a fight like and having that ability changes the very way in which you fight as you describe with your with your mentor um and you see the same thing in jiu-jitsu.

Like if you know that if you get a hold of this guy's arm, leg, or neck, it's literally just done. You've got the mechanics to just put him away. You can endure anything. You can be pinned, held down, passed, everything, and you'll just bide your time and get to that and then get to that finishing position it it gives you a kind of uh relaxation and then the storm of of competition where you just say okay i can be behind i can be down on points but if i get a hold of you it's done and it's it's a

it's a true i don't want to i don't want to use the word superpower but in the realm of martial arts it is a kind of a superpower, the ability just to finish at any given time. It's a different thing when you fight someone who you know can knock you out with a single punch. I guess Francis Ngannou is a tough opponent to deal with because you make even a single error and it's just good night.

He's the ultimate example of that. Yeah. Because he's such a freak athlete. Just like how rare is it to see a man who's a natural? 275 pounds just enormous. Yeah person with just Ridiculous power, you know the power is it's the great equalizer And we were talking about Canelo Alvarez before this too We're talking about the fight with Billy Joe Saunders when I was showing the picture of all the fractures of Billy Joe got on his face

Joe Saunders, when I was showing the picture of all the fractures that Billy Joe got on his face. He's, to me, the perfect example of what's possible as a fighter because although he has this one-shot power, he also has spectacular technique. He does everything right. Everything right. His defense is on point. His timing his his footwork is everything is he does everything so well but also has that thunderous power where he puts it all together in such an intelligent and and well measured way I mean I fucking love watching that guy fight yeah because he embodies like Floyd has the spectacular talent an amazing technique but he doesn't have that power it's a different thing with a guy like Canelo because it's rare that someone

has that kind of power but yet also develops that kind of amazing defensive ability that he has the integration of extreme finishing power with defensive soundness is the highest ideal in all of martial arts. And you see it. When you see it, it's a truly special thing. You see the mature Canelo Alvarez. You see it in him. You saw it in the 1980s with Mike Tyson,

a guy who could barely be hit at his peak. It was hard to land a blow on Mike Tyson. But every blow he threw at you looked like it would take your head off. Those are two extreme examples. My job as a coach in jiu-jitsu was to try and push my athletes towards that. My athletes are known for their ability to escape. They can get into terrible situations and dig their way out. They proved that time and time again in early EBI competitions. But at the same time, they have devastating finishes. And that martial arts ideal of the extreme integration of the ability to finish mixed with defensive soundness is the direction you want to push all martial arts, whether they be grappling or striking.

It's one of the reasons why it's so fascinating to watch the approach of your athletes in comparison to some of these other athletes that have been competing for far longer because they're intimidated by the approach of these guys that are completely submission based and you see it you see it and the reason why gordon has such a hard time finding fights you see it when these guys wind up talking about matching up they want all these special rules they want to do different things they want they to figure out a way. They're kind of pushing away before they even engage. They're talking a lot of shit and they're puffing their chest up, but they're like, how about we do in the gi? How about we do it this? How about ADCDC rules? How about we do this? There's all these different caveats that they want to apply. I think there's part of them

that recognizes that they fucked up and they've been spending all this time trying to win on points trying to stall trying to do all these different things to be champions but not embracing what is really truly spectacular about not just jiu-jitsu but all martial martial arts, what we're talking about. Yeah. I agree that that ability to manifest the ideal and that ideal based around the combination of defensive soundness and extreme ability to finish. It's like the universal appeal of martial arts. It's what took you in as a 15-year-old boy. It's what made you turn your entire life in that direction. That's what I saw as potential as a 28-year-old man when I began jiu-jitsu.

And I think the more we stay true to that principle, the better the future of jiu-jitsu looks. 100%. It is what martial arts are supposed to be about. It's not supposed to be about winning by points. It's supposed to be about the ability to close the show, the ability to stop an opponent, the ability to strangle an opponent, the ability to end a fight.

While denying him the ability to do that to us. Yeah. It's just so rare to see it applied the way your guys are applying it, it applied the way your guys are applying it where you you really do have a whole team that has the hardest they're taking the hardest path they're taking the most difficult path but also taking the path of legends yeah yeah i think that's um uh and and long term i i'm always trying to impress upon this is the way to build a brand this is the the way to, you know, no one's going to remember the guy that won by advantage four times in 2018. They're going to remember the guy who consistently came out. And this is not just true for my athletes.

You see it among other great athletes, too. You mentioned before Marcelo Garcia. We talked about Roger Gracie. Everyone who embraced that idea of Brawley with Steamer, these were guys who went out and ruthlessly hunted for the submission. Yes. And they're the ones that people remember. Yeah, the only ones. Yeah, it's, I guess it's just, there's so many things that have to fall in line

for that to be the main focus of your gym. And for a place like your place, whether it's Henzo's or where you're at now in Puerto Rico, it relies on someone like you. And it's these conversations I've had with Gordon, I've had it with Craig. There's only one John Donahue, and I don't know how you recreate that.

That's what's crazy. It's like no one wants to be you it's too hard like no one wants to be a guy that's there seven days a week that trains the martial arts the mixed martial arts classes trains the jiu-jitsu classes train striking trains them in grappling and then goes and watches tape and studies like wrestling matches from the 80s and tries to figure out some new move. And you don't have a family, and you don't have other obsessions. You have a singular obsession with making these athletes the very best possible.

I don't know how you do it, and I don't know how you do it without straying. I don't know how you do it where you're seven days a week completely obsessed it has to be your mind your personality your foot like what what the way you interface with martial arts is very unusual to recreate that you would require so much of a person you You're this weirdo that like, if you were a character in a movie, I would go, yeah, good luck finding someone like that. Like there's not a lot of you out there. So for another team to be in the same space as you guys,

to have the same sort of success ratio and to have the same sort of mindset, you need a guy like you you need a guy who was teaching philosophy at columbia who just decides to get obsessed with jiu-jitsu like how many of those are there you need a guy who's you need a guy who's like fully completely dedicated to making his athletes the very best in the world, but also does it with a quiet intelligence. The way you even coach is different. You're a very weird guy.

I hope you know that. You're here with a fucking rash guard on. We're not rolling. Why do you have a rash guard on? But you wear rash guards every day. You understand it's very hard to make a John Donahue. So you've kind of raised the bar to this very bizarre and impossible standard. A big part of it is I'm just by nature a curious person.

I just think that we have a short time here on this earth and accumulating knowledge about the world around us is just part, it's a huge part of what makes us human. And people that aren't innately curious about the world in which they live are usually not very interesting people. But as far as martial arts go, I think that all human beings have a kind of innate response to martial arts that comes out of our biological history. We grow up in a highly competitive world, and human life is this kind of strange mix between competition and cooperation. There's limited resources out there and a growing population,

and inevitably there's going to be conflict as people go into competition with each other. The earliest forms of competition between humans were probably empty-handed, and then as weapons became to become employed, primitive weapons, and then as we got more and more sophisticated, the weapons got more and more sophisticated.

But somewhere deep in our collective history, there's this sense that it's important to know how to stand up for yourself physically, and if you can't do that, you're not going to survive in a competitive world. So all of us, I think, in some kind of deeply buried part of our mind can see martial arts and say, hmm, this has some kind of innate appeal. It appeals to something very, very deep inside all of us that comes out of our ancestral history. But at the same time, unrestricted violence is a

terrible, terrible thing. And no society can function with unrestricted violence. Human progress is impossible without it. And so we find as humans have to acknowledge that in a competitive world, violence is part of our world. But that unrestricted violence is just as damaging as being a complete pacifist in a world of murderers. And so martial arts is the ideal of structured violence, where you learn the techniques that can make you safe in a competitive world, but they're put into a socially acceptable framework where you're not harming the people around you. You're involved in competition, but in a way which is not going to terribly injure you, either yourself or the person you're competing against, the violence, as it were, is reduced

and made socially acceptable. It's taken to a level where it could be part of a functioning society. And if practiced, I sincerely believe, makes for a better society because it makes people acknowledge we are in a competitive world, that not all people in this world are good-hearted, and that at some point you've got to be able to stand up for yourself. And if you can't, you don't want to be a saint in a world of murderers. You're not going to do well.

But on the other hand, you don't want to be a murderer in a world of saints. You can't have that. And so martial arts, as it were, is the compromise between cooperation and competition. It gives you the ability to compete all the way down to physical violence. But at the same time, it takes the violent aspect of martial arts and puts it into socially acceptable competition, socially acceptable structures that results in a population of people. If you had an entire society who practice martial arts, so for example in Japan, everyone does judo in high school. You have a group of people who can stand up for themselves and compete physically in a potentially dangerous world,

but at the same time they're socially cohesive and they're not using violence in a negative, destructive, antisocial fashion where they're harming people and stealing property or what have you. And I believe that's the greatest virtue of martial arts for society is that it finds that balance between humanity's basic fact that we live in a competitive world where there's limited resources and growing populations where physical violence is always going to be the ultimate method of determining who wins in competition for those limited resources. And at the same time, doesn't mean we degenerate into a violent culture

where no human or civil progress is possible because we're at each other's throats 24-7. And that I see as being the great social benefit of martial arts. So even someone like me who came from an academic background can look at martial arts and see that's an important thing. That could be a great benefit both to individuals and to the society in which they live. Yeah, I think that the danger of martial arts and the danger of whether it's training or competition itself is one of the most intriguing aspects of it because it makes figuring out the problem so much harder.

Because I always describe martial arts as high level problem solving with dire physical consequences. It's a very good definition. Because it is this thing where what you're really trying to do is overcome your fear, your anxiety, your emotions, and also apply technique, strategy, explosive force, conditioning, and discipline. Because you have to put the time in training in order to get your vehicle to be functional in this extreme environment. You're responsible for adding the horsepower to the engine. You're responsible for tuning the suspension. All

these things are done through discipline and hard work. If you don't do those things, your body doesn't function well enough for you to even apply your own knowledge. So there's so many different levels to it. There's the actual technique, there's the knowledge of these techniques and how to apply them. And then there's the physical capabilities of your own body and all of them together. There's, there's so, it's so comprehensive. There's so much going on that when you meet the really truly elite players whether it's gordon or gary or hicks and gracie or hodger or braulio estima or any of these elite athletes they're exceptional human beings like very very unusual people with intense mindsets and they are the people that figure their way through this

insane maze and by doing so they have they've provided an example of what's possible they've they've reached a very high level of human potential and i think ultimately that's what martial arts are about it's a it's a fantastic way of looking at it. I agree with you about the whole problem-solving aspect. There's a sense in which when you're engaged in jiu-jitsu you're both throwing problems at each other and it comes down to can you solve the problems that I create for you faster than I solve the problems you create for me. And that more or less determines how I train my athletes because everything comes down to what is your speed of decision-making and problem-solving. People talk about speed in

martial arts all the time and almost always what they mean by that is physical speed. But the most important speed of all is speed of decision making and problem solving and that's very much a mental thing and a huge part of what I do as a coach is to try and reduce the time it takes to make critical decisions a big part of how we do that is by having systems in place per position. Because if you follow a system, the system makes the decisions for you. You've already been in that position 10,000 times. You know exactly if I perform action A, there's going to be reaction B, C, D, and E.

And then if I go forth into action E, that's going to change those options. And you just go down this decision tree based upon the actions that you're making and the responses you're getting from them. And because you know what the system does, and you know where the system leads to based on that decision tree, you're making decisions subconsciously, as it were. As I said said earlier the system is making the decisions for you because it's already in place um and the other guy is trying to react to those with conscious thought it's like oh man what do i do now i haven't been in this position before so you're making decisions at a rate several times faster than him in that one domain and so um i i see a lot of virtue in your understanding of this idea of decision-making and problem-solving.

And a big part of my coaching program is to create systems to do exactly that, to take the decision-making and problem-solving you do and reduce the time it takes for you to do that in the various common scenarios of jiu-jitsu the application of these systems is what's changed jiu-jitsu because there's been so many athletes in the past that were just exceptional maybe they had a few good moves and they knew how to apply them they had steps that they had done the gym and in competition many many many times so they had a clearly a clear well-oiled pathway that they would go down but they didn't have many they didn't have like clear systems that they would teach in that regard and a lot of times i would watch even elite guys train and it would be very open-ended it would be very much just rolling and relaxing and flowing and all these different things but they they weren't relying on systems and they

weren't doing with one of the things that i think you and the squad do that's so important is putting yourself in disadvantageous positions over and over and over and over again, putting yourself in the worst place you can be. And Craig talked about this yesterday, that when he would get into a bad position, he would freak out, and he wouldn't know what to do, and he would blow a lot of energy and it just would would be a Bad thing for him. But now because of the training that you guys do he's always in bad positions Every time he gets in a bad position. It's like oh I'm here every day I must say just on the side that Craig skill level is

Massively increased and His defensive acumen is so much greater now than before. It's very, very impressive to watch. When Craig first came in, he had a great attacking game, but was weak in defensive fundamentals, and that's no longer the case. He's a much more well-rounded athlete. It's very impressive to watch. That young man's got a huge future ahead of him. He's deeply, deeply impressive. your phrase that the training was kind of open-ended. There seemed to be a lot of instinctual stuff going on. Guys were doing good moves, but it seemed to come out of spontaneous application of instinct rather than anything else. I think what impressed many people about the squad when

they first started training is that you saw not just one exceptional person doing well, one exceptional person doing well, but a group of people doing well and doing more or less the same thing. And that idea of successful replication, I think, is an important part of growing the sport of jiu-jitsu. It can't just be a case that we see an exceptional athlete and go, oh, well, he can do that because he's just exceptional. He's just gifted. The moment you resign yourself to saying someone is just gifted, you're, as it were, that's a cop-out. You're saying that you can't explain why they're good. And if you can't explain why they're good, you can't teach someone else to be good in the same way that they're good. Our goal as a coach is to be able to make everyone in the room good, not just the Gordon Ryans and the Gary Tonins and the Craig Joneses,

but everyone should rise in level. Of course, I don't expect them all to be as good as Craig Jones or Gordon Ryan. That's not reasonable. Most of them don't have the time allocation to do that. They're just busy with their careers, their families, et cetera. But they should be able to go up noticeably. families, et cetera, but they should be able to go up noticeably. And my test, as it were, of the efficiency and efficacy of a training program is not to look at any one individual, but to look at the room overall and ask yourself, are they all performing in similar ways with similar success?

First off, how good are the worst people in the room? The ones who have been there for five years, but they're the worst in the room. If they're absolutely terrible, that says something pretty negative about the training program. It means that whatever the good guys are doing isn't replicable because the bad guys can't get a heel on it. So I always look at the the weakest elements in the room. And then the other thing you look at is how many people can apply that program successfully. Is it something that only works for a certain body type or does it work for all body types? How universal is it success? Does it work for young people, old people? Um, and, uh, I think that's what impressed people about the squad.

You saw not just one person doing one thing well, and then another guy on the other side of the room doing his thing, which was completely different. And he was also doing pretty well and no one else in the room was very good. That to me isn't really indicative of a good training program so much as it is indicative of two outstanding individuals. And outstanding individuals tend to arise accidentally rather than deliberately. And as a result, I can't take any credit as a coach for their success. Secondly, I can't take whatever success they had and transmit it to a guy who's come to me for advice. I should be able to take someone who's athletically ungifted, works in a bank, has a family and can only train three times a week and still make him pretty damn good at jiu-jitsu. I'll give you an example.

damn good at jiu-jitsu. I'll give you an example. One of my proudest moments as a coach was when I had a 42-year-old lawyer who no one's ever heard of go into a local grappling competition. He's married with kids, trains three times a week, and he submitted a heavyweight world champion jiu-jitsu black belt with a heel hook in 43 seconds. It's on video. Wow. Now that to me is more indicative of the success of a training program than Gordon Ryan doing the same thing. Because this guy just has much less training time and much less invested in the sport as it were. And that to me is that ability to replicate the success of the great people on a smaller scale among the people who aren't so great,

that to me is indicative of a good training program and that's always what I strive towards. We're talking about physical freaks, how important physical freaks are to test the limits of your technique and we're talking about Nicky Rod and we have one ultimate physical freak you really do I mean he's an impressive individual and very unusually impressive because there's a lot of big guys but there's not a lot of big guys that can move the

way Nicky does the way his hip flexibility comes into play when he's passing guard I mean and but you were telling me the story, and I would love it if you repeat it, about when Gordon had his back. Your listeners should be aware that Gordon Ryan is arguably one of the best back control experts of all time, if not the best. I certainly have never seen anyone control a back without a gi

at a level even close to Gordon Ryan. It's truly extraordinary. One day he was training with Nicky Rod, and that's always a tough match. It's the classic match of technique versus attributes. One guy has flawless technique. The other guy has insane physical attributes. And I'll come back to the idea of technique versus attributes later because it's an important topic.

But Gordon had Nicky Rod's back and with a fully locked body triangle, and it's working for a strangle. So Nicky Rod feels the strangle. This is Gordon Ryan. Anytime Gordon Ryan gets a fully locked body triangle, traps one of your arms and gets his arm around your neck. The number of people who get out of that can probably be counted on one hand in the entire world's population. reaches back and grabs Gordon Ryan's head. At that moment, sorry, Gordon Ryan goes to adjust his body triangle,

and for one infinitesimal part of a second, his body triangle is unlocked. Nicky Rod just did a full backward roll into what can only be described as a backflip and up into standing position and left Gordon lying on the ground underneath him in kind of a weird north-south kind of situation. And Gordon Ryan just sits up, doesn't look at Nicky Rod, looks at me and goes, so what the fuck do I do about that?

I just look at him and go, I don't know. I ran out of ideas. I'm supposed to be the coach and I don't know what the fuck to say. I'm like, yeah, he's a freak. How many people can even do that? I didn't even know it was physically possible until I saw it with my own eyes. I'm imagining someone grabbing a head and then springing backwards. It doesn't even make sense.

So crazy. And I remember just thinking like, my God, this is insane. But going back to attributes and techniques, whenever you go into a bout against an opponent, ultimately what you're trying to defeat is a mix of your opponent's skills and his attributes. And everyone carries with them their physical attributes,

their mental attributes, and their skills. And your potential in a bout against another human being is measured by those two things. What are your attributes? What level do they operate at? And what is your skill set? Okay. And of course, they are linked. I have a lot of knowledge, but I have a crippled body. And so that adversely affects my skills. There's certain, I know how to do many things that I simply can't do because my body won't let me do them. It's just something I can't do. So skills and attributes are related. The better your attributes generally, let me rephrase that, the better your physical attributes generally, the better your skills.

You'll learn skills more easily if you're strong, flexible, fast. They generally come more easy to you that way. But there's also mental attributes, and these are things like problem-solving ability, memory, speed of decision-making, confidence, things like this. And ultimately, we're a mix between our attributes, which are divided into physical and mental, and obviously there's some overlap between those two, and our skills, which are learned over time. Now, as a coach, there's only so much you can do with regards attributes. There's things you can do. You can improve someone's confidence. You can improve their speed of decision-making. There's things

you can do, but you can have less effect on an attribute. They are more hardwired into you as a person through your DNA. But skills I can work on, those I can improve significantly. So most of my time is built up around skill development. But it's undeniable that you can have someone who has lesser skills than you, but if their attributes are at a certain level where they are so far superior to yours that no amount of skill will make up for it. There's a reason why there's weight divisions in jiu-jitsu.

There's a reason why there's sex divisions in jiu-jitsu. why there's weight divisions in jiu-jitsu. There's a reason why there's sex divisions in jiu-jitsu. Because you could have someone who conceivably was an immensely talented black belt lightweight or female who took on a reasonably talented blue belt heavyweight and could easily lose the match just because you had better skills, but they weren't enough to overtake those attributes. And so that clash between skills and attributes is the great clash in martial arts. Martial arts tend to appeal most to people who figure low on the attribute spectrum, people who aren't very confident, who aren't very big, who aren't very strong. And so they use skill as a crutch to overcome attributes.

Things get really freaky when you get someone who is strong in both attributes, both mental and physical, and skills. That's when you see the super athletes. And that's the potential for a guy like Nicky Rod. That's the potential. So he's really at the starting blocks in a way. He is. He is.

But always remember the attributes are much wider in nature than most people give them credit for. Most people tend to focus on speed, explosivity, endurance, flexibility, but always remember the mental attributes too. And I'm not just talking about confidence. Nicky Rod's the most confident person in the world, but there's also things like discipline, mental, in the world. But there's also things like discipline, mental, ability to retain information, ability to make decisions under pressure. And these are immensely important and don't get talked about very much. Okay. So you can be very strong in attributes in some areas and quite deficient in others. And that will be either a positive or negative for your development as an athlete. So it's not as simple as, oh, this guy's physically a god.

Okay, well, maybe. But what about, for example, Gordon Ryan on the attribute level is he has good isometric strength. He has poor flexibility. He has shockingly poor speed his physical speed is it's unimpressive to be honest he has excellent endurance

at least before he had his stomach problems but if he's operating normally his endurance is excellent but you see he's quite deficient in some areas but then you go to the mental route his confidence is off the charts. His ability to retain information, one of the best I ever saw. His ability to make decisions under stress, I think top three I ever saw.

Okay, so people talk about attributes, but it's more nuanced than most people think. Don't forget some of the attributes that never get mentioned, particularly things like problem solving, making decisions under stress. These have immense consequences for an athlete. And they compound. Yes. That's what's fascinating. And the ultimate goal is getting to the finish line. Yes.

Like who gets to the finish line? Who wins? Yeah. Who manages the interaction of those attributes and skills the best gets over the finish line. Like who gets to the finish, who wins? Yeah, who manages the interaction of those attributes and skills the best gets over the finish line first. Yeah. And it's a complicated story. That was an interesting thing you said earlier, Joe.

We jumped over it more quickly than perhaps we should have. You made a fascinating point about the idea that it's about there is a finish line and that's agreed upon, the knockout, the submission. But who gets over there is a complicated story. And you gave a nice rendition of just how complex it is in terms of the various elements that you have to bring together. But ultimately, it comes down to skills and attributes. It's fascinating to me that there's the variety of different athletes, that they vary so much,

and that you rarely have, like as we were talking about Canelo Alvarez earlier, you rarely have the athlete that has everything, that has the discipline, has the physical attributes, has the mental understanding of how to win, the ability to cross that finish line, but also with those physical attributes, didn't neglect technique at all and develop the same sort of ability that a guy like Floyd Mayweather, who doesn't really have that kind of power has. If you can impart that into a guy like Nicky and give him all the attributes that Gordon has.

And understand also, Joe, that some of the attributes and skills can conflict with each other. Okay. So, for example, if you have immense reservoirs of strength, flexibility, and speed, you might not feel any need to learn technique. You got to need it. Strong, fast, flexible. And so it can actually hinder your skill development. It's a tricky thing to develop this ultimate athlete who is strong in all of them. Think about how few times coaches generate truly great athletes. Let's look at an example of a coach

who I really look up to a lot, Customato. He started coaching in the mid-1940s, I believe, and finished pretty much with his death in the 1980s, mid-1980s. He coached all the way through. How many athletes did he produce in that time? Jose Torres, Floyd Patterson, Kevin Rooney to a certain extent. Great athletes. Yeah.

He's a good athlete. Yeah. Better trainer. Got knocked out by Alexis Arguello. Yeah. That was a fascinating match. Amazing knockout, by the way. Yeah.

But Mike Tyson was the prodigy. I think 99% of your listeners will agree with us if we just said, okay, Jose Torres was a very, very good light heavyweight. Light heavyweight champion. Floyd Patterson is even a level above that. Undersized heavyweight. Undersized heavyweight, fought some of the greats, but very, very,

like one of the greats of the 1960s for sure. And of course, one, Mike Tyson, who is incontestably in the top three of all time. All time. In his prime. People want to judge him based on the later aspects of his career when he had lost motivation and he was partying and recklessness. I judge him on the Mike Tyson that knocked out Marvis Frazier, the Mike Tyson that stopped Larry Holmes. In my opinion, he's like top two or three. I totally agree you and even when you even at the end of his career when he was falling apart he was still very impressed yeah even his fight with

Lennox Lewis I mean yeah he was barely trained at that point it was still a very competitive fight yeah like so so let's say custom auto in the course of almost 40 years of training produced one great, all-time great champion and two very good champions. That's three people in 40 years of work. Out of how many athletes? How many? Hundreds, I'm sure. Hundreds and hundreds.

Okay. In my experience, I teach literally hundreds of people in a given month in New York City. My average class size on a Monday afternoon was like 100 to 120 people. That's Monday afternoon, and I teach seven days a week. And yet, how many came out as great grappling champions or mixed martial arts champions? Five or six. Yeah. So the numbers are small.

Yeah. Like in order for someone to go into that uber realm of athletes, and I'm talking about coaches who bring them up, okay, because that's a very different thing. Okay, there's plenty of coaches who aren't really coaches. They're trainers. They bring in athletes who are already world champions, are already very, very good, and then they just train them for competition. That's a different thing. At that point, you're recruiting people and training recruits.

Castamaro took Mike Tyson from age 13. He took in Jose Torres as a young developing Olympic boxer. I believe Jose Torres won the silver medal in the 1956 Olympics. I had to check that. But Floyd Patterson was the youngest heavyweight champion of all time when he won the title. So he started with these guys, and he really was a coach who brought them up from youth into world championship status. So he's like a genuine coach and mentor.

And yet three people in a 40 year career to make someone into that Uber championship status, a lot of things have to fall into place. And I think you raised a very deep point, Joe, that man, the numbers of people who can get that to happen. Very small. It's very, very small. The number of athletes that can figure their way through the maze and not lose motivation, not change course. And Joe, there's so many arbitrary things. We talked about arbitrary before about how

you walked into a Taekwondo school and just based on the fact that you went in at 7 p.m. instead of sent 7 10 p.m. turned your life around I mean think about how many things that can go wrong I've had students that were enormously talented enormously talented could have been a Gordon Ryan but they met a woman and fell in love got married okay now that's a wonderful thing I am happy that they did that but just anything can happen in your life. You can be in a car accident. Life is very, very arbitrary.

There's so many things that can derail you. And it's a delicate, delicate process to get someone to that level. And there's 10,000 things that can go wrong on any given day that could derail the program. It's hard enough just to balance the attributes and skills over time and keep someone there long enough to develop those skills. And then there's intercepting forces from outside that could just derail everything. That's why we love when someone does come along like an Israel Adesanya. It's an incredible thing.

It just becomes that guy. It's so rare. Yeah, it's so rare. But it's what makes the sport so fun. Because it's so hard to do. Because it's such a crazy journey to get to become a champion in any discipline. I mean, all value in life is based around scarcity. And there's nothing more scarce than the factors involved in getting to the top of combat sports.

As you say, there's just so many things that are required to get there and so many things that could stop you and become a roadblock to the top of combat sports. As you say, there's just so many things that are required to get there and so many things that could stop you and become a roadblock to the path that when it happens, it's something magic. I'm sure, Joe, I'm sure you are similar to me that you can literally cast your mind back over 30 years and remember Mike Tyson fights from the 1980s, where you were, where you saw them. I know I can. I remember knowing that he lost to Buster Douglas, watching it after the fact and still thinking he was going to win.

You got to understand like that's how dominant Mike Tyson was. I remember I was working as a bouncer and I came home and it was a very, very late night and I was coming home and I saw a copy of the New York Times with the news that Mike Tyson had lost in Japan. I remember just disbelief, like, oh, that's not possible. And because it was just anyone who grew up in the 1980s watching it was just like this guy was literally the greatest fighter of all time and um it was such a shocking

event what people don't even really understand is there was such a lull in the heavyweight division before him which made his ascension so much more spectacular because there was the guys like pinklin thomas and and tony tubbs and there was these champions that you know with all due respect nobody gave a about they just they weren't excited all the action in the 1980s was between the four greats uh roberto duran tommy hern's sugar ray and um uh and martin haggler yeah i guess uh guess you could also add the Jamaican fellow, the body snatcher. Mike McCallum.

Yeah, Mike McCallum. And then there was Donald Curry and Milton McCrory. It was an incredible time. Oh, it was an amazing time. But the heavyweights were weak. And you went from Muhammad Ali, who had taken the heavyweight division to such, it became the most important thing in sports in the 1970s.

Then the 80s was this huge, sorry, the late 70s to the mid-80s, there was this huge dip in the heavyweight division. All the attention went on the welterweights, and then suddenly Mike Tyson came in. Well, there was a part of that was that people resented Larry Holmes for beating up Muhammad Ali, which is very unfortunate because I think Larry Holmes is one of the most underappreciated heavyweights of all time. Because in his prime, he was amazing.

He was so good. And he had one of the best jabs in the history of the sport. I mean, even when he fought Mike Tyson, that second round came out jabbing him. It was competitive. Yes. You know, it's an odd thing talking about jab and Mike Tyson. Isn't it remarkable to think Tyson was so short for a heavyweight?

Was he 5'10"? And the average height of his opponents was like 6'2", 6'3". And yet he was never outjabbed. Yeah. That's incredible. It is incredible. There's a reason why they call it reach advantage in boxing, because it really is an advantage.

And yet he was able to completely nullify people's jabs, including very good exponents of the jab. The Holmes fight, though, made me wonder, like, what would have been like if Larry and him had fought in Larry's prime? Yeah. Because Larry was catching him quite a bit with the jab. But just it was this immense firepower advantage that Mike Tyson had. And when he did club him with that one right hand, you see Larry's legs give out and he went down and he's trying to shake off the cobwebs. Yeah, but you realize like it's just he's a different species. He was just he was so superior in his prime.

I mean, the way he would wreck people was like there were executions yeah it's also crazy to think back then that it just shows you how far martial arts have come that at that time incontestably when you talked about the best fighter in the world you meant the best boxer in the world but nowadays no one would say no one the best boxer in the world is the best fighter in the world is the best fighter in the world yeah like the whole scene is shifted right there's all this talk about francis and gano and tyson fury fighting there's no talk about them fighting inside the octagon yeah there's not a question in anybody's mind how that fight would go down yeah i mean that would be it

would be kind of fun to see francis hit a takedown i don't think he would i think he just kicked the shit out of his legs yeah you're right and just eventually get him to the point where he could barely walk just a couple calf kicks and that would be a wrap there's been so many cases where talented boxers

took on kickboxers sometimes it goes the boxers way there's some notable examples but leg kicks the only time I can think of it ever going the boxers way

is Shannon Briggs yeah but Shannon Briggs. Yeah. But Shannon Briggs against Tom Erickson. But Tom Erickson was really a wrestler. Yeah. He had good leg kicks and he landed a few hard ones, but Shannon was like so superior as a boxer. But Vince Phillips, when he fought Masato, that's a good example.

They had some excellent demonstrations out of Japan in the k1 where they had some there was one notable exception though there was a South African boxer who did very well against Franz both yeah yeah and he he went on to fight Tyson yes it was actually a pretty competitive fight until he got knocked into the next century well both I went to k1 after he was a heavyweight boxer. Yes. Yeah.

But he did pretty well. He did pretty well. Yeah, well, he was just a really tough guy. There was a few of those guys that were capable. But the difference between boxing and kickboxing at that level is, you know, if Franz Botha had to fight Ernesto Hoost or someone like that, he'd get lit up. You know, there's levels to all that.

But even Ernesto Hoost lost to Bob Sapp. It was just a pharmacological experiment. Bob Sapp was the freak of all freaks. People don't know, if you don't know, if you never saw him fight, when he was 375 pounds with abs that's insane so it's easy to rattle off that the numbers 375 pounds until you stood in front of someone who's 375 pounds did I met him in Vegas he was so big yeah it was so it was just preposterous just preposterous. I remember people don't understand what it's like to be hit by something like that.

There he is. There's Bob Sapp in his prime, walking out with a robe with feathers on the top of it. And by the way, Japan loved him. I don't know what went wrong. I don't know all the exact specifics, but something went wrong with the deal with negotiating. Look at the size of him. My God. Something went wrong with negotiations and with the people that ran K1,

and there was a time where this is when he fought Mirko Krokop, and Mirko Krokop fucked him up. Crushed him. Well, Mirko was an interesting example because, you know, we talk about attributes, right? Mirko was never the very best kickboxer in the world. He was very elite. But what he had over a lot of the best guys was the ability to close the distance very quickly and to strike very fast.

And guys that didn't have that kind of style, like a good example is Peter Ertz. Peter Ertz, he was much more of a technique based He wasn't nearly as fast didn't have the same kind of one punch one punch knockout power That Mirko did and never went into MMA or if he did I'm not aware of it Same with Ernesto who so I don't think those guys would have been as successful Yeah, but Mirko had this insane ability to explode he could stay outside, just pop, and that's what he did with Bob Sapp. He caught him with a straight left hand and fractured his eye socket. Yeah, no, he had devastating striking with the rear side of his body, both hand and leg.

Yes. And as you say, an ability just to close it. Yeah, there it is right there. He popped him in the eye and dropped him. him and Mirko just had that one punch one kick speed and and power that made him it directly applied to MMA in a way that other fighters didn't and you know other guys who are more technique based who would set things up and more you know it take time to cook their opponent in kickboxing when if those guys try to get into MMA they just weren't as successful. You needed something to get guys off you. Yeah. I agree with you with the lumberjack, Peter Ertz.

If you look at his knockouts, a significant percentage of them come from some kind of clinch break, where he's clinching people, pushes them off, and on the separation, he would kick over the shoulder and knock them out. But if he was clenching people like that in MMA, it would have been taken down immediately. So it wouldn't have worked. Whereas Mirko had that ability to stay out, stay out, stay out, and then bam! And hit and it was done. It is, it's just, it's so fascinating how different people's bodies work and how there are guys like BJ Penn who had this insane flexibility and dexterity to his legs

and would control guys. And one of the things about BJ Penn that I always felt very interesting because it applies to the way you teach jujitsu is that BJ would wrestle with his legs. His legs were such a significant part of his game. And there many guys for whatever reason men generally turn tend to try to Clench things and do things and do everything with your arms, but BJ figured out like insane leg flexibility and dexterity I know he practiced it too because he had a really interesting Workout regimen that he would do with bands. He would have these these rubber bands and he would use them in He would have these rubber bands and he would use them in flexibility training. And he would have these bands pull his feet in certain directions and he would resist against them.

Interesting. Yeah. I never watched him do it, but someone who trained with him talked to me about it. The way he would use these resistance bands specifically for working on his flexibility and strength in unusual positions. Fascinating. If you look at BJ, one of the most remarkable factors about his career is his speed of learning. If I remember correctly, he got his black belt in a shockingly short period of time. Three years, and won the Mundials. And won Mundials.

he got his black belt in a shockingly short period of time. Three years and won the Mundials. And won Mundials. So, and that was at a time when no one from America was even thinking about winning Mundials. He just came out, bang, and won. And I've always claimed that the people who learn the fastest in jiu-jitsu are those who learn to wrestle with their legs

as early as possible. As you correctly point out, most human beings have a natural tendency to attack every problem with their hands and arms. Everything we do in our life is mostly working with your arms and hands. And so when we fight, we do exactly the same thing. And your hands and arms are only a tiny fraction of your overall strength. If I asked you, Joe, to walk across this room, that would be the easiest assignment I could ever give you. But if I asked you to walk across this room in a full handstand, even if you had the flexibility and skill for it, it would still be a workout. it would still be a workout.

Okay. Our arms are massively weaker and have massively less endurance than our legs do. And so when you can get people to start working with their legs as early as possible in their development, that's when you see people getting good at jiu-jitsu very, very quickly. And so as a coach, if I'm in charge of a beginner's program, I'm mostly known as a coach of people who are already good, but I actually love to teach beginners more than anyone. Almost everything they do is learning to use exclusively their legs in their early development. Now, this is very frustrating for a lot of people because you feel clumsy as hell. And athletes who are strong with their arms suddenly have to use their

legs. They feel helpless and uncoordinated and foolish. But if they can get over that, they progress very, very quickly. We were talking earlier, I was showing you a video of Jeremiah Vance, who's one of Andy Bravo's black belts. Very impressive. He has like BJ Penn level flexibility. Insane dexterity. And his-jitsu game from the bottom is so shocking to people because his ability to just without using his hands at all move his feet in position across people's looking to go go plata or omoplata position it's just so so much dexterity so flexible that having someone we were talking about like a guy like Nicky Rod who's got that kind of freak athleticism, it's got to be possible to have a guy who's got that kind of freak athleticism as a heavyweight and that kind of dexterity. I mean, it's not mutually exclusive to be large.

And also, I was telling you about this guy that works out at my gym. That's correct. He's like 6'3". And yet has similar flexibility. Ridiculous flexibility and ridiculous dexterity, the way this guy can move his body. And I see him working out and I almost want to tell him, you're wasting your time. You need to learn some martial arts. All this working out you're doing is great, but you're not applying it to anything.

You could be amazing. Like break dancers are something that we figured out at 10th Planet with Richie Martinez and Gio Martinez. They were break dancers. And we never thought of break dancing as being a way into martial arts. I thought of wrestling. I had thought of gymnastics. And we talked about Mark Schultz had been a gymnast. But these break dancers have crazy dexterity.

Yes. Amazing ability to move their body. Richie can put one hand on the ground and like put one hand up in the air and do a full lotus with his legs. Wild shit. And you watch them move around and spin on their head

and all that kind of stuff and the ability just to control their body, it's so applicable to jiu-jitsu and Richie's another one who has this incredible leg dexterity, amazing flexibility. But all these different tools that, when applied to jujitsu, make for a really difficult guy to deal with. Yeah. Ultimately, your goal in jujitsu is as much as humanly possible

to create situations where you're using your legs to wrestle against an opponent's arms and upper body. If you can make your lower body fight his upper body, you can beat bigger people than yourself and do it quite often. Always understand the fundamental features of the human body. And one of those features is the massive discrepancy between the upper body and the lower body. Humans are quite pathetically weak in the upper body and surprisingly strong in the lower body. Interestingly, the difference in strength between men and women is very dramatic in the upper body, but much narrower in the lower

body. And so if you're going to beat bigger, stronger people, the whole key is to match your legs against their arms, your lower body versus their upper body. And as much as possible, that's what I try to do in my coaching. And getting students thinking in terms of wrestling with their legs against their opponent's upper body is one of the best ways you can do that. So a lot of the early training is in the use of triangles, where you're using your legs to strangle. You're using your legs in a way which leads directly into submission, your legs versus their upper body,

your legs expressly against their head and one of their arms when you get students thinking in those terms legs versus arms that's when they start making very fast progress how much time if any do you guys spend on flexibility actually I don't coach physical training at all among my students. We never have a class where we work on flexibility. We never have a class where we work on strength. I've always believed that athletes will tend to find physical programs that suit their own personality and body type best. If you look at physical training outside of the gym, I've never seen a convincing study that shows that one program is definitively better than another,

that it gets sports performance and jiu-jitsu significantly better results than another program. I've seen people get excellent results than another program. I've seen people get excellent results with Olympic lifting. I've seen people get excellent results with kettlebells. I've seen excellent results out of just bodyweight training. I've seen some people just do like basic body building and do just fine. Never has there been a situation where I saw a guy do a given strength program where he got noticeably better at the sport than people who didn't do it. I've never seen any strong evidence of this.

Similarly with diet. I've never seen anyone change their diet and their sports performance increase. And so I don't coach these things because I've never seen anyone engage in them and just get noticeably better. But I can teach someone technique and then two weeks later they're beating people they couldn't beat two weeks ago. But I can teach someone technique and then two weeks later they're

beating people they couldn't beat two weeks ago. This I can coach. So what I do is I just tell my students, find some kind of athletic program. I do think it's important to work on your strengths. I do think it's important to work on your flexibility, but find something you like. Some guys like yoga. Some guys like pnf stretching some guys everyone finds their own their own ground and a big part of that is self-discovery you learn a lot about your body by working on your own attributes and it's important that judaistic players learn to discover the strengths and weaknesses of their own body what are you good at what are you not good at and start tying that into the technique that i show you i can coach people

all day on technique and i'm very very confident that when i do that i can make. I can coach people all day on technique and I'm very, very confident that when I do that, I can make them, I can improve their sports performance. But I've, as I said, I've never seen reputable studies which conclusively show that one method of gaining strength definitively gets better sport results in grappling. Is this because there are no methods that are better or is this because no one has really taken the same sort of comprehensive approach to training athletes specifically for jujitsu and competition the way you have doing it with technique? That's a fascinating question. Think about if someone had the same all-in approach that you have to training your athletes in jiu-jitsu

but did that training them in physical culture training them in stretching range of motion in endurance training the Tabata intervals all these different methods that we know for a fact to be beneficial to athletes and we're talking about like you know oftentimes the difference between athletes is so small with what makes the winner versus the loser like it might be just the ability to push at that one moment where the other athlete's tired it might be a better understanding of positions to be able to be able able to push the pace of technique where the other person can't keep up with the rhythm. There's so many variables.

One of them you're covering with jiu-jitsu and technique. But when you're talking about Gordon Ryan, say, being not very flexible. Like imagine if Gordon Ryan had the kind of leg dexterity that Jeremiah Vance does. That's not physically impossible. Like Jeremiah, if you met him, he's a regular guy. You know, BJ Penn's a regular person. You see him, he's not a freak. I mean, he's freakishly talented. But imagine if you take someone who, I mean, we're talking about Canelo Alvarez having this incredible power but also having this amazing discipline in terms of

his ability to recognize that that power is not everything boxing and learning all the technique and learning how to be defensively responsible learning all the different strategies in terms of fainting and movement there's so many different things to learn in jiu-jitsu. But if you could learn all those things and have the most optimized physical training, it just seems to me to make sense that that would take things to another level. That's a fascinating argument you've raised, Joe. Let me try and, I believe I can give you an answer

as to why I don't coach these things. It makes sense that you wouldn't because I don't know how the fuck you do what you do already With regards the question would this make a difference? There's been no study on it so I don't like to teach in areas where I just

don't have good evidence for giving an opinion and so it would be dishonest of me to suddenly start claiming this strength program is better than this one. I don't have evidence for it. If I had evidence and there was a difference, I would go with that method. You asked a very interesting question in between that question, though. You asked something very interesting indeed. You said, well, what if you took Gordon Ryan and you just made him more flexible he wouldn't he be better than he is now yeah he'd be better in

some things but you've got to ask yourself that comes at a price of now you're investing in that form of training that means you've got to you've got to stop doing other forms of training there's stretching though let me go further with my explanation. There's things that I can do with technique which will improve your sports performance much more dramatically in a given time frame than any investment you could do in terms of attributes. Let's look at a concrete example because otherwise it's going to just sound too vague. George St. Pierre versus BJ Penn. BJ Penn had some of the most perfect jiu-jitsu flexibility I've ever seen in my career. Like he had, there's different kinds of flexibility,

but the flexibility he had was literally custom made for the application of jiu-jitsu technique, especially from bottom position, but also from back position as well. George St. Pierre has good linear flexibility. He's got good front splits, side splits, good for kicking, but he has quite poor jiu-jitsu flexibility for bringing your knees wide and feet in for guard position. So he has a good kind of flexibility for standing striking, but not a good flexibility for guard play. When George went to fight BJ,

everyone said to me, this is the second fight they'd already fought one time. When he went to fight the second time, that was the mature George St. Pierre. When they first fought George, I believe it was only a blue or purple belt. And they'd had a close fight. And the second time, George was a black belt and much more mature phase of his career. And the discussion was, well, how do you want to fight him? And in the first fight, everyone had said, you can't go to the ground with BJ. He's a world champion in jiu-jitsu. If you go to the ground, it's suicide.

And I was the lone voice saying, no, George should go to the ground with him. Take him down. And BJ's very talented, but he's never actually submitted someone from bottom position. And as long as BJ doesn't get on your back or get top position, George is going to be just fine. The best part of George's game is positional advance or staying inside someone's guard and striking from those positions. And that's how ultimately George won the fight. George lost the standing game in the first round. BJ easily won the first round.

And George won the next two rounds largely with takedowns and ground and pound on the floor. So when the second fight came, I was an advocate of the ground again. This time people were willing to listen based on what they'd seen the first time. But I wanted to go further. I said, not only are you going gonna take him down to the ground, you're gonna pass his guard. And everyone just laughed. They were like, BJ's literally never had his guard passed

in competition, either Jiu Jitsu or MMA. He's got one of the best guards in the world. You're never gonna pass his guard. And they all gave the same reason, he's too flexible. Literally, this is a guy who you try any guard pass, he can just take his foot and without even touching his foot, just thread it back in and go into place. And I agreed he was the most flexible jiu-jitsu athlete

I'd seen at that point in my career. And I also agreed that he'd had superb guard retention skills as a result of that. But I was also convinced that if you played a game where you shut down the mobility of his head and hips, you would render the flexibility inoperable. You wouldn't be able to use it. And famously, George passed BJ's guard seven times in slightly more than 10 minutes in that fight. Now, you might argue, well, some of that was because BJ took a heavy hit early in the fight, and some of it because BJ got tired towards the end of the fight. Yes, this is all true, but the fact remains, a man who'd never had his guard passed ever in competition suddenly had his guard passed seven

times by a guy who is not even in the same realm of flexibility for jiu-jitsu as he did. What made the difference? Would the smart thing have been to train George St. Pierre and BJ Penn style flexibility in the time available? No. He got much better results not by trying to change his own body attributes, but rather by the use of technique to shut down the attributes of his opponent you get much more mileage out of shutting down the other guy's

attributes than you do trying to to build your own attributes your own attributes don't change that much but your ability to shut down someone else's attributes can be changed massively through the application of technique in very short periods of time. And so when it comes time to invest training time, because we all have limited time, we all have limited energy, and the question is always, how can I maximize my use of time and energy in my training program? I've always pushed towards the idea of favor technique and skill, which shut down the other guy's attributes more than try to change your own physical attributes. Most certainly, I agree with you.

But I do think that you're talking about skills that aren't mutually exclusive. And I think that if you do stretch after training, you can still do it even if you're training just as hard. It's a matter of doing it or not doing it. It doesn't take away anything from you. It doesn't exhaust you. It doesn't blow you out. This is all correct, but now you're going to have to presumably use that form of newfound flexibility that you have and start to develop new techniques out of those. Why not just work with techniques that suit the attributes you already have

and invest all of your training time in that? It's pretty easy to shut down the other guy's attributes with technique. So why not just stick with what you're already very, very strong at? These are the attributes you have. They are paired with a certain skill set which expresses those attributes best. Why bother investing large amounts of time in another set of attributes? Then you have to learn a whole new set of skills appropriate for those attributes.

Now you're juggling whole new skill sets at a time when you're competing and you've got a competition coming up in one month. You're not going to be able to bring those in in that time period. So you see- I see what you're saying. As the body changes, you you're gonna have to change the techniques technical change takes a long time learning a new technique and applying it at world championship level is a big deal it might take you six

months to a year so do you think that this same what you're saying is because Gordon is at a world championship level would you have that same approach to someone who's literally at day one no No. At day one, you would say? No, because at that point, they're an open book and you can write the whole narrative from the beginning. Right. So for Gordon, he's too far down the path. Yeah. And at this point, it's no longer worth the investment in time to completely restructure his game, which is already winning. And especially given the fact that he's in a busy competition schedule where he has to perform not three years from now, but next month. Right, right. We were talking before about Ways to Well and the treatment that they're

going to provide Gordon and hopefully deal with his stomach issue. Yeah. Yeah, Ways to Well is a company in Boston. They're actually the people that bought me the sign behind me. It was a gift to me coming here. So that sign's from them. Thank you, Brigham. And what they want to do is using stem cells and BPC-157. Apparently there are some papers that have been published on different methods of dealing with stomach issues using those.

Yeah, I truly hope they can succeed. Yeah, I hope so too. Tell me what it's like because he's described it, but tell me what it's like as an outsider. It's one of the most frustrating things I've experienced as a coach. George also had stomach issues, but his was an ulcerative colitis. It's a different kind of thing. But in Gordon's case, he has extreme nausea and stomach pain, which began after he took an antibiotic course in response to a staph infection.

Now, Gordon tends to think that the relationship between the antibiotics and his current illness is causal. But of course, it could also just be a correlation. It's not guaranteed that the antibiotics caused this problem. There's plenty of other people who've been on the same wide spectrum antibiotics as he took and they never had stomach issues. It's possible, but it's not certain. The truth is no one really knows definitively what is causing it. He's had numerous tests. Some of those tests point in certain directions that the treatments that he had have either not worked at all or only worked for a very short period of time and then the whole thing has relapsed. Over the three to three and a half years that he's had it, it's gotten worse over time and appears to be getting worse as we speak. Gordon won two,

sorry, four ADCC medals with this problem in place and numerous matches in between. And yet every training session was a battle. And I've watched Gordon's personality change as he struggled with this. He used to be a very lighthearted, happy-go-lucky kid who would come into class and laugh and talk, and that's gone. happy-go-lucky kid who would come into class and laugh and talk, and that's gone. He's a person who's more or less permanently in pain and nausea, and inevitably that has definite effects on your personality. He's at times deeply unhappy and distressed.

It's incredibly sad to be around someone who you care about deeply and see this kind of thing occurring at such a young age I'm not going to lie to you it's even more distressing to see that there's cycles of hope where a treatment seems to work and then fails there was one brief period for like one month where he was fighting a very talented Brazilian grappler called Mateus Diniz, who's an ADCC champion. And for like one month before that fight, there was a period where the symptoms lifted and it was like a cloud just came off Gordon Ryan. And he immediately started eating again, gained weight. Training was easy. He came out, had one of the best matches of his career,

and then a week afterwards just came right back. And that down of a period of hope where it seemed like things were going to improve and go back to normal, and then to see him go back into a relapse was just, it was hard to watch. And there was nothing that correlated with that relapse? Completely random. And doctors couldn't explain it. And so it's truly sad to watch. And Gordon struggled through all of this quietly. And I don't use the word heroically very lightly but there was like a quiet kind of heroism about it where he just said I've got to perform I've got to prove that what we do works and I've got to get out there and do this and he went through camps where dude that guy was suffering, just coming in, just miserable. And yet he always stuck to it and went out and performed and won.

He hated to talk about it publicly because he saw it. He didn't want to use it as an excuse. And he thinks excuses are weakness and won't tolerate them. And I have to say, in the last couple of months, for the first time, even Gordon's stoicism has started to break down. And for the first time you're seeing, even in the gym, he can't finish workouts. As bad as it was before, it never got to that point. And we're now at a point where Gordon sometimes finishes, usually doesn't. And there's certain elements of training, standing, wrestling, scrimmaging, he can't do.

And it's sad. And I truly hope that he can fight his way through this. At this point, I'm afraid to say that the only thing that could turn it around is either a successful medical intervention, some treatment that we didn't know about. I'm hoping above hope that your medical friends can help. But at this point, it's not looking good, to be honest with you. It would have to be either a successful medical intervention, or it could be one of those things that passes with time.

Uh, what you notice with the human body, particularly the stomach, which is so incredibly complex and unknown. Anytime you have a situation which just seems to arise without a clear cut cause, these things sometimes come and go. And sometimes these things can be a long-term problem which goes away with time and so those are really the only two ways I see this being resolved either there's a successful medical intervention or time plays a role and eventually the condition just improves by itself over time if Gordon couldn't compete again for the future I think that would be a

tragedy for the jiu-jitsu world because he's essentially not even at his peak yet. He's only 25 years old. I don't believe Gordon will hit his peak until his early 30s. So to lose someone of that magnitude who plays such a pivotal role in the technical development of jiu-jitsu would be an absolute tragedy for the sport.

I think about it in terms of worst-case scenarios and best-case scenarios. Best-case scenario, either your medical friends or some other doctor can find a successful intervention or it resolves itself on its own and Gordon comes back to compete and everything's good. And a worst-case scenario where Gordon cannot compete, I would do my utmost to rebrand Gordon as the former greatest athlete in no-gi competition into the greatest coach of all time.

I take heart from the fact that if you look at the four greatest American wrestlers of all time, Dan Gable, John Smith, Kale Sanderson, and Jordan Burroughs, all of them are superb coaches. Jordan Burroughs is too young. He's still competing, so he hasn't gone into a coaching career yet. But the other three were the greatest American wrestlers of all time who went on to become the greatest American wrestling coaches of all time. And they actually had more influence as coaches than they did as athletes. And I'm 100% confident that even in a worst-case scenario, worst case, where this illness just doesn't resolve and Gordon is never able to compete again, that he would transform the sport in a different way, that he would become a far greater coach than I ever was. I believe this with all my heart and all my soul. I didn't even start

Jiu-Jitsu until I was 28. Gordon Ryan is 25 and he already knows almost everything that I know. And in addition, has many of his own techniques and adaptations, which I never had. So at age 25, he's just as knowledgeable as I am and only getting more knowledgeable as each day passes. Just as knowledgeable as I am and only getting more knowledgeable as each day passes. I'm 54 I didn't start till I was 28 Imagine Gordon Ryan when he's 54 He knows more about the sport now than I do at 54 and he's 25 So worst case scenario worst case where Gordon can't compete He'll become the greatest coach of all time and he'll have a greater influence on the sport

then Jordan can't compete, he'll become the greatest coach of all time and he'll have a greater influence on the sport than I ever could. It's really amazing what he's been able to do in such a short amount of time. Other than just consistency and hard work, he always gives credit to you and says that you are essentially like a cheat code and then having you as a coach has been a cheat code for his career but what what separates him from everybody else like what can people learn from that if you wanted to mirror the immense success that gordon's had in jujitsu yeah it's a it's a truly fascinating question um There's a sense, Joan, which you've got to ask, what's more important in skill development? Is it the coach or the athlete?

And I always tend to favor the athlete for the simple reason that if I coach 1,000 students, you're not going to have 1,000 Gordon Ryans. You're going to have just two or three Gordon Ryans out there out of a thousand. Now, in my defense, a large part of that is because of factors we talked about earlier. Some people could have been a Gordon Ryan, but life intervened in a certain way. They got injured. They fell in love, they moved to a different country or what have you. They just chose another career. But there has to be a recognition that there are some athletes who bring something to the table which the others don't. And no matter how good or bad the coach is, if that person hadn't walked in the room, the coach never would have been able to develop

someone else to that level. So there is something to be said for this idea that there are some athletes out there that just bring something to the table, which no one else does. And the question you're asking is a fascinating question is what the hell is it? What do these guys do? hell is it? What do these guys do? People talk about persistence. It's not persistence. Okay. There's a lot of people out there who do the wrong thing very persistently and they get nowhere. It's intelligent, adaptive persistence. Yes. Persistence is part of the formula because if you're not there for long enough, skills take time. There's a whole scientific literature about the development of skills and how it's almost like an electrical wiring in the human body and it occurs over time. But as I said, just doing the wrong thing repetitively isn't going to make you a world

champion. So what kind of persistence is required? Well, it has to be adaptive. You have to be able to look at what you're doing and engaging in and assess whether it's working or not, which parts are working, which parts are failing? Why are they working? Why are the other parts failing? And make adaptations over time so that you change your training structure in response to success and failure. And this has to be done along intelligently guided routines. And so it's not enough just to say,

well, Gordon Ryan's just persistent. He just hung out in the gym long enough and he got good. Okay, no, it's because he's adapted the various things that he's tried through trial and error as time went by and looked for success and failure and paired out the various failures or tried to improve upon them and kept the various successes. And that idea of adaptive persistence is probably the single most important thing. Now, persistence itself is a value-laden term. You used a term that I love and is deeply embedded in martial arts before, Joe, you talked about discipline. Persistence is a more wide-ranging way of talking about discipline.

But discipline goes in so many different ways. It's not just about showing up to the gym and showing up to the workout. It's not just about being told to do 300 repetitions and doing all 300. It's also about discipline of thought. That's the most difficult form of discipline to stay mentally engaged in the game. When you've been working out all day and you're dog tired, all you want to do is go home and watch a movie, but you don't. And you sit back and ask yourself, what did I do today? Why did I succeed at A and why did I fail at B and you research and you talk to your mentors and your fellow athletes and you puzzle things out and you solve problems. That's the kind of discipline that

really comes in. It's more the mental discipline of mental engagement in the project and the ability to say what failed on Tuesday can be modified by this method, this method, and this method, and it can succeed on Wednesday. Of building cumulative success over time while eliminating failure. Of staying in the game, that's persistence, but making it adaptive so that as circumstances change and as the problems you've confronted with change, you're adapting to that change and intelligently directing it by asking yourself these questions what is making this work and what is making this fail how can i change this to my advantage and all of this training and this trying to figure out the proper way to address all these various problems and the solutions that they present that you find to deal with them. Is this something that's written down? Do you talk about it after

classes? Do you talk about it before classes? Is it something that you're documenting or is it something you keep in your memory? Great question. I try very hard to keep everything very informal. Why? Because informal human relationships create a group camaraderie which cold clinical studies never can. Training together with the same people for years is a hard thing. Everyone's got a big ego.

A lot of times those egos clash. A lot of times you don't like the people you're training with. There's a lot of rivalries inside any training room. I don't like training with that guy. I like training with this guy. I like training with that guy. I like training with this guy. Keeping a lid on negative social interactions over time is a big, big part of it.

I've failed spectacularly in some cases. I've had students leave. They said, John, I don't like the way the room feels. I don't feel welcome in here. And they just leave. And they're happy with someone else. That's good. It's good for them to be happy.

But I've always found when you try and keep an informal group class based around things like people don't talk about humor, sacrifice for people you work alongside, this keeps a cohesion in the room, which is important for development, which can literally take years. It can't just be everything's cold, unemotional, and documented. I like to keep things,

I know I come across as a cold, unemotional asshole, but in class I'm much more informal. And we joke a lot. We tease each other. And it's a lot more laid back than it appears from the way I am. I don't think you come across that way, by the way. I know you pretty well. You're just efficient.

But we play around a lot. We joke a lot. And it has to be that way. Has to. Because Joe, you've been in training rooms for years, your whole life. You know what it's like. Dude, there's times you're looking at the guy across the line. You're like, I fucking can't stand this guy.

And now you've got to go and spar him. You're going to spar someone you don't like? It's going to get physical. It's going to get heated. And so keeping things human is a big, big part of it. So I try to avoid overly cold clinical documentation. Okay, here's how we do things, step one, step two. In the classroom, I try to keep it more informal.

So when these situations come up and you don't feel like they're being accurately addressed, then you find an informal way to discuss it. Yeah, and often it's in a group setting. And we'll make fun, if someone fails spectacularly with a technique, we'll all make fun of them and laugh about it. And then we'll go, okay, here's how you would do it.

And we go through trial and error. We say, okay, it worked on this guy, but what if the guy was more flexible? We pull in a flexible guy, we go, okay, what if the guy was heavier than you We pull in a flexible guy, we go, okay, what if the guy was heavier than you? And we play and experiment like this. And that kind of informal group setting keeps a better group cohesion over time.

One of the problems that Gordon had with this stomach thing was recurring staph infection. Craig Jones said he had the same thing too. Is that something that's an environmental issue in a specific location? Like I'm not, I don't totally understand where staph

comes from because I know it's something that lives in the skin, it lives in your mucus membrane, right? But it also can be very prevalent in some gyms, right? Yeah. Starve is universally present. You and I right now are covered in starve. Yeah.

Okay. And there are many different varieties of starve. And some of them are quite innocuous and some of them are extremely damaging. and some of them are extremely damaging. And in general, staph works by going through some kind of damage to the skin and penetrating the dermis and scratches, abrasions of some kind.

That's why they often occur in places like the elbows and the knees and the forehead because these form most of the contact with the mat. And if there's, now, as I said, many of the forms of staph are quite innocuous and penetrate the dermis with no effect, and others can be extremely damaging, all the way to, like, flesh-eating viruses,

which can absolutely change your life for the worst. As regards geographical locations, you can reduce, and I'm not speaking as a medical authority here, but in my experience as a coach, you can reduce the occurrence through good hygiene. Running a good hygienic program is important. You run into problems when mats aren't cleaned well. But in truth, I do believe that most of the infections, not just staff, but also other skin infections that commonly occur in gyms, tend to be more person to person than mat to person. tend to be more person to person than mat to person. I know training in New York, we had a very high incidence of staph infections.

Yeah, you had a slight smile on your face when I was bringing it up in environmental. Yeah, I didn't want to mention names or anything. But you couldn't hide that. There's no way to get around that. So there's an issue with the New York gym. There was. There was. There was.

What do you think was going on there? Just wasn't clean correctly? No. I just think that the number one problem was that we had an enormously high number of visitors per class. Now, think about it. Let's say you're a kid from Nebraska who wants to train with the squad. You've just saved up all your money. You're living in Nebraska. You're not making that much.

And you bought a plane ticket and you got a hotel room in New York City. New York City is literally five times more expensive than your hometown in Nebraska. You saved up all your money. And then three days before you fly, you get a staph infection on your skin. If you cancel everything, you lose all that hard-earned money.

What are you going to do? You're going to fly to New York and train with the squad, aren't you? That's what they all did. So we'd get people coming in. They would have a staph infection on their elbow or knee, and they'd wear an elbow or a knee pad. And when they come in, you look at them. Skin looks good. we're fine after like three minutes of training the elbow pad slips and you just see a bloody infection and i'd be like buddy come over

here i mean what's that on your elbow i don't know really you don't know just came up yeah i scratched it right that's a staff infection you're gonna have to leave the mats okay and so this was a common thing anytime you have massive numbers of visitors you have much less control over who's coming to the gym the visitors themselves are incentivized to continue training even when they have an infection just because they've invested so much of their money in the trip to the gym. So it is a potential problem. Thankfully, we were able to get around the problem at the end with just a skin infection program where we just looked at people. When they came in to visit, they had to do a full inspection of their skin.

So you had a woman's inspection and a men's inspection and they were inspected and the problem That's so crazy. It's kind of awkward. But that's how wild that gym was. That's how wild it was, yeah. Did you guys use anything like defense soap or anything like that?

Yeah, I always encourage people to use, there's also other, I always found the best results came with HIPAA cleanse. That's a hospital soap, which is very, very powerful. There's also- But isn't that like a serious antibacterial soap that kills all the good stuff too? Yeah, that's the problem.

Well, that's the good thing about defense soap. Yeah, there's very little reputable medical literature on how much defense soap yeah there's there's very little like reputable medical literature literature on on how much defense soap and the i mean they basically use like teachery oil they're all based around this yeah so um yeah there's not a lot of hard evidence to show that they do such a great job but there's no incentive to make those studies either yeah yeah so i don't think it's not pharmacological it's basically all the evidence is anecdotal. So you guys, I tried this for three months, and I never got a staph infection. Yeah. Well, how reliable of a trial is that?

Was it a double-blind trial? I'd have to talk to Guy Sacco from Defense to find out what studies have been done on tea tree oil or eucalyptus oil. Bear in mind always that when they give you a study, it's not just a study. It's a sales pitch. True. They're going to give you a study, which is so. What about acidophilus and things along those lines? Yeah, again, it's all anecdotal.

There's no hard evidence. I like to go with evidence rather than just anecdotes. But yeah, it's definitely a problem. But you're not getting in, sorry to interrupt, but you're not getting those same problems in Puerto Rico. No. Is that correct? There's also other reasons too.

Like Puerto Rico has much more sunshine. Yeah, that's what I was going to bring up. Sunshine is a natural antibacterial element and antifungal as well. So it's just a generally healthier lifestyle. Like as a general rule, wind and sun and good for skin infections we're also talking about ocean swimming in the ocean and that might play a part these things all are positives as opposed to like you know a sweaty basement with yeah in new york hundreds of people like it's in a polluted city yeah that's that's a tough environment. Yeah. So, yeah, I do believe that you can, there are things you can do to reduce the likelihood of it.

But at the end of the day, there's only so much you can do. And there is a danger that you can end up with a situation they have in hospitals where you use so much cleansing that you end up producing super strains of bacteria, which is terrifying. That's when you get into some truly scary stuff. I remember when I had my hip replacement, the doctors, there's a 14 inch scar on my butt. And the doctors were very, very concerned that even in a hospital, there could be a staff infection and they were saying like you know the strains we have here are not like the strains you have in a gym these things all like they'll we'll have to take the whole thing out again if it gets infected so um there was like a critical two-week period when the scar goes to close itself, where you have to be super vigilant.

So, yeah, you want to be careful about going too crazy about the cleaning program. Then you start killing, as you say, the good bacteria, and then you get a proliferation of potentially super strains of bacteria. So it's kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. How is that hip replacement? It's magical insofar as it makes you pain-free. But always understand that they cut through 14 inches of the most important muscles in your body,

which are your gluteus muscles. And so you feel quite weak on that side. Still? Oh, yeah. How long ago? Be like four years now, I think. There's no bringing it back? Think, yeah. How long ago? Be like four years now, I think. There's no bringing it back? Think about it.

If a guy took a knife and cut you in the hamstring, 14 inches down your hamstring, would your hamstring ever be the same again? No. You could walk, you could run, but it wouldn't be like it was before. It's not like a Hollywood movie where you get cut and you're fine. So basically you're pain-free but weak. you're fine. So basically you're pain-free but weak. And the other danger, of course, is there's always the danger of infection that could destroy everything. And just the fact that if severe dynamic pressure was put on it, it could pop out and dislocate. And that would be a serious problem more severe dynamic pressure than

would be required for a regular hip or the same um because obviously any hip can pop out any hip can pop out but uh significantly less in the case of a hip replacement wow but no pain yeah that's the main thing yeah i i unfortunately i didn't mean to sound like a hypochondriac but i have a crippled knee on the same leg yeah so i'm going to get a knee replacement on the same side and this is all from a rugby accident yeah for people that don't know your history uh i had a surgery and the surgery was the root cause of the problem they did a shitty job it was 1980s surgery yeah my yeah my friend Steve he used to be on the US ski team and he's had some ungodly number of surgeries on his knees

he has both of his knees replaced they're all resurfaced and the whole deal but his how old is he 65 I believe he's in his 60s houses mobility in his knees terrible yeah he's in his 60s how's his mobility in his knees terrible yeah he's a savage god bless him he doesn't give a fuck

he's the guy he's I mean he's had more surgeries than anybody I've ever met in my life he's had both his shoulders done both of his knees resurfaced he's had retinas detached

he's had everything yeah he's he's still trains still trains god bless him he's a good man he's an animal

still spars even better oh yeah he doesn't give a fuck he just he goes I'm not here for a long time god bless he's a good man he's an animal still spars even better oh yeah he doesn't give a fuck he just he goes i'm not here for a long time i'm here for a good time it's always his attitude he's always in pain doesn't give a fuck he's like one of the most courageous guys i've ever met but he um he uh was the first guy that i ever met that had knee replacements his knees had to get resurfaced They were just bone on bone cartilage. So he's got these metal things that it's pretty interesting to look at. And they're going to do that to you, huh?

Yeah. When are they going to do that? I'm hoping to hold her off as long as possible. I would like to see the juniors in the squad get into the mature phase of their career because you just never know. Like if I got the knee replacement, I should be okay for coaching and teaching, but mine is complicated by the fact that I'll have a hip replacement

and a knee replacement on the same leg, which is a little more of a gamble. Gamble in terms of the sizing? Of what I can do afterwards and um uh so uh i'm hoping to hold it off as long as i can what are you doing now in terms of exercise um i just uh do very very light uh weight lifting and uh you can you can actually lift a surprising amount and basically it's like a deadlift or a clean with uh with the hip replacement you can actually lift a surprising amount in basic lifts like a deadlift or a clean with the hip replacement. You can't go crazy, but you can lift, you know, like 200 pounds is not a problem. And I just lift enough to sort of reduce pain in my body as much as I can.

And it's all pretty basic stuff. Does it frustrate you to not be able to roll? I can roll very light but at this point I made a decision when I got my hip replacement that my life would be about my students rather than myself so as long as you keep your mind focused on on them then I don't miss it. I get more pleasure in watching them roll now than I do in rolling myself but you do always want to be in a position where you can move your body enough to demonstrate yes I'd be heartbroken if I couldn't demonstrate a move that would mean I'd be sad yeah

that is an interesting thing right about martial arts is it requires the person is teaching to be able to perform the movements yeah there's literally no other way to do it. You can't just describe it. It's not going to work. After I had my hip replacement, my students bravely demonstrated all the techniques, and I would point with a cane. Like Master Splinter.

I don't think that's sustainable over time, though. You can do that for a couple of weeks, but not forever. What keeps you motivated at this stage of your career? I mean, you've already amassed this incredible empire of killers. You've got these guys to move with you all the way to Puerto Rico. And I wanted to talk to you about that as well, because what is that like to go from crazy, crowded, polluted New York City to paradise? I mean, you're in this gorgeous—I mean, I watch the videos of you guys. Like, there, it's a gorgeous environment. No, it's beautiful. While I taught in New York,

many of my best students in the gym were Puerto Ricans who live, New York has a very high Puerto Rican population. They always told me about their homeland, and they would go back and talk about it. It always sounded intriguing. I'd never been. it it always sounded intriguing I'd never been Gordon Craig Nikki and some other members of the squad had gone down there and they talked very highly of it they loved it when covert 19 broke out it was difficult to train in New York and the the local authorities were very much against the idea of gyms training. We had a special ability to train because we only allowed professional athletes to train. It was legal for professional athletes to train in New York, but not regular classes. So I lost 95% of my students as soon as the order to not run regular classes came.

So it was just them training in the basement, and we got an opportunity to go down there and train in Puerto Rico, and the squad was very much in favor of it. Me personally, I know you said New York's a horrible, polluted city. Well, it's a great city. I love New York. I always did. It is horrible and polluted, but it's also amazing. I focus more on the amazing parts of it.

I loved it. You lived in the city, though. I think most of the students that you had didn't. I think that's the problem. I always tell them, dude, you guys literally see the worst parts of New York. All you see is the bridges, the tunnels, and the parking garage that costs crazy amounts of money. And then you go home at night. You need to live in the city. But they never did. the tunnels and the parking garage that costs crazy amounts of money. Then you go home at night.

You need to live in the city. But they never did. Well, it's very difficult to do. You have to make a lot of money to be able to live well in New York City, right? I mean, I came to New York with $400 in my pocket and I lived in the city. But that was in the 1920s, right? I set myself up for that one. You hit me right between the eyes for that one.

1930s, Jim. 1930s. But you must have, I mean, at the end, you probably had a nice place and you were doing pretty well teaching there. Hugely successful gym. But I had no part of the gym. That was my teacher's gym, Henza. So I never took any money from the gym. I only made money on my private classes and seminars. You never got paid to teach at the gym?

No. I was paid a little bit, a stipend towards my rent. What? Yeah. Really? I'm fine with that. I don't see any reason why you should take money from your teacher. I've always believed in the, I think the Americans have they call it

you eat what you kill I've always believed in that and I used to teach privates all day and that was more than enough for me I'm not someone who needs a lot of money that's a very unusual perspective your perspective is again what I'm saying like it's good luck replacing John Donaher. Good luck replicating that because of the fact that you don't need a lot of money. Most people, they want a lot of money. They want a bigger apartment, they want a car,

they want a nice this and a nice that. I think money has its value. The prime function of money should be freedom. It gives you freedom to do things and that's a wonderful thing. But I did that largely by the fact that I didn't want many things, and I had many friends who were very successful. Like, for example, when George St. Pierre would call me to train, I would fly up to Canada, and he would have a nice hotel room for me.

So it wasn't like I lived like a homeless person or something like that. But I just feel like as long as you have enough money to be free, you're good. And that was always my approach. Living in New York City, what was the big appeal of it to you? Initially, I came there for my education at Columbia University. And you must remember, I was raised in New Zealand. And New Zealand is a beautiful, beautiful country. But it's very small. There were more people in Manhattan than there were in my whole country when I left. And moreover, New Zealand is largely an indigenous Maori population, a Polynesian population, and a European population from our colonial past. So

really there's a fairly limited sort of group of people. It's either Polynesian, Maori, or European. When you come to New York, it's literally like the entire world is represented in there. And it's just an amazing experience. And people talk about travel being the best educator. And I sincerely believe that. I believe that travel opens your mind in ways that nothing else can.

But the problem with travel is that it creates an irregular lifestyle where you can't develop skills. And what makes any human being great at anything is skill development. The only way you can develop skills is by having routine in your life. So where do you go? If you want to travel, you can't have routine. You can't develop skills. And if you're stuck in one place, you develop a routine. You can develop skills, but your life's boring and you don't really get to see much of the world. But New York City was the incredible compromise. It had both. You could be in one location. You didn't go to the world. The world came to you. And so you had all the benefits

of travel, of meeting people from every culture and seeing how they lived their lives, et cetera, et cetera. While at the same time, you had a fixed location from where you could train, develop skills and become great at the things you loved. But it doesn't seem like you really have the time to experience much of what New York City had to offer with the schedule that you had in terms of being there seven days a week, training people constantly, doing privates all day, training the squad. Where is all this time? Nighttime. Nighttime. So what would you do at nighttime? Go to different restaurants? Of course, yeah. That was what it was about? And you can go around, meet people you've acquainted, coaching.

I had many famous athletes coming in, and people from the UFC would come in and work, and you would go out at night and talk. So it was easy. Daytime was work, and nighttime was relaxation. So you just enjoyed the diverse nightlife of Manhattan. Also, I worked in the nightclub industry for my first 10 years in Manhattan, too. So I was very familiar with the nightlife scene.

We've got to talk Gordon Ryan in the movie to Texas. I think it's going to be pretty damn easy for you. Gordon, first of all, he loves Texas. Like, loves it. Secondly, he loves cars. And Texas is a car culture. I took him out of my 900 horsepower Dodge Ram. Did he crash it? Oh, he fucking loved it.

No, he didn't drive it. I drove it. Okay. But I have the most ridiculous truck. It's a Hennessey Dodge Ram. It's 900 horsepower. It goes zero to 60 in three seconds. That's insane.nessy Dodge Ram. It's 900 horsepower. It goes zero to 60 in three seconds. That's insane.

For a giant truck. An odd thing about me, Joe, among many odd things, is that I learned to drive in New Zealand in an Austin Morris 1000. It's a car that I believe has around 37 horsepower with a four speed stick. It is literally the most feeble car of all time. Like going up a steep hill is like a total challenge, like zero to 60. I'm not even sure if I can get to 60. Um, and that's what I learned to drive on. Then I came to America. I went straight to New York. I haven't driven a car in 30 years. That's amazing.

So now I'm in Puerto Rico. You have to have a car. So I'm looking around. That's the car? Yeah. That thing has 37 horsepower? That's amazing. Wow, it must be so slow.

It's unbelievably slow. Morris Minor. Wow, look must be so slow. It's unbelievably slow. Morris Minor. Wow, look at that thing. Hmm. Good job on the Google. He's the best. I've never seen one of those before. Never even heard of it.

So now I'm looking at cars, and cars have completely changed from what I learned in the early 1980s. Get yourself a Tesla. Man, I don't know if I'm ready for that. You're ready. I have one right here. I'll let you drive it. In Puerto Rico, the electricity goes out pretty often.

A Tesla might not be the right choice. In Texas, for sure. That's a good point. That's a good point. If you get out here, though, get one of them. I'm looking at every car now. It's over 300 horsepower. It's insane.

Tesla has 1,000. When I was a kid, automatic transmissions were like three speed, slow as hell. I'm looking at every car now. It's over 300 horsepower. It's insane. Tesla has 1,000. When I was a kid, automatic transmissions were like three-speed, slow as hell. Now 10 speeds. They've got dual clutch. They've got crazy stuff. The automatic transmissions now, they shift faster than a human can. They're better than manuals.

It's crazy. They're all interesting, but they're all stupid compared to electric cars. Really? Oh, yeah. Look, I'm an automobile all stupid compared to electric cars. Really? Oh, yeah. Look, I'm an automobile collector. I love muscle cars. I have a whole collection. I have a 1970 Chevelle and a 65 Corvette and a 70 Barracuda and a 69 Camaro and a 69 Nova. I love those cars.

They are stupid in comparison to my Tesla. My Tesla is infinitely better than them infinitely they're just amazing they're art they're they're rumble and sound and feel and it's just there's they're they're so mechanical i just love shifting and putting in the clutch and seeing the letting it off and go but in terms of like sheer technology and brilliance every time i'm in my tesla i'm like shaking my head like this thing is fucking amazing it's so fast it goes zero to 60 in 2.4 seconds it has a massive screen that shows me the navigation i talk to it i'll say like boop boop navigate to Three Fork Steakhouse

and it's a and it asks me if I want to navigate on autopilot and I go fuck yeah and you hit the button and if you want

you go do do and it does the whole thing for you it'll navigate for you it'll drive for you it's it's so effortless the way it like passes cars

and gets on the highway and you never have to go to a gas station I plug it in at my house or plug it in here at the studio Jamie does the same he plugs in here too. Did you say zero to sixty in two point six six two point four two point four now Am I correct in saying at that point your son is deal with g-forces? Oh, yeah, you're like that's acceleration way You're like throw. Oh, yeah, your face, Oh yeah. I'll take you. I'll drive you back home to your hotel today. That's scary as fuck. It's hilarious. And it's quiet.

Makes no sound. We grew up in a generation where you put your foot down, the faster it goes, the more noise comes. Oh yeah. Well, that's with my truck. My truck is really fast, but it's really loud. It's really, Gordon loved it oh yeah yeah he's a giant boner on that but it's uh they're stupid compared to teslas um tell me something um you said you had a uh 69 nova yes when you when you have these cars are they stock are the engines stock or do you get custom stock cars What do you put inside them? I get modern engines. Really?

Yeah. How does that work? You get a company like Roadster Shop is the ones that did my Chevelle and my Barracuda and a couple other cars. And what they do is they'll take the shell of these beautiful vintage muscle cars and then they put a custom chassis. vintage muscle cars and then they put a custom chassis and they take this custom chassis that they design specifically to add rigidity to the body and then you have a much more sophisticated suspension technology independent front and rear suspension so all the wheels move independently they handle far better massive disc brakes really sophisticated shock absorbers and coilovers what do they do for transmission oh it's a modern transmission so it's a modern six-speed transmission so amazing yeah it's much

much much much much so essentially would i be correct in saying this is a Nova only in appearance? Yeah, in appearance. Yeah. So you have the best of both worlds. They call them resto mods. And what does the Nova have for horsepower? 650 horsepower or something like that. That's crazy.

The Nova is still in California. It's still being worked on. Steve Strope has been working on that car for a couple of years. He's a master. He's in a very small shop, and he has a small amount of people working on it. Roadster Shop is a very large shop, and they have a lot of employees. Amazing. They do work.

Google Master. What's the word? Google Master. He's asking me a question. Oh, Google Master. What was the horsepower in the stock 69 Chevy Nova? Chevy Nova SS. Look up the fastest one.

I'm going to go with 360. First of all, what did it have under the hood? Was that like a 420? It was probably, I don't know. Did it have the old Hemi? It might have been a 454. You might have been able to get it in a 454, but I don't think it had more than the high 300s.

Now, that's pre-catalytic converters, correct? Yeah. They probably had some pretty decent horsepower. Maybe, but, you know. Did it have a manual transmission? Yeah. You could buy it in a manual transmission, but you couldn't even lay it down because the tires were dog shit.

They were thin, skinny tires. Makes sense. They stomped on the gas, they'd peel out and go sideways, and the balance was all fucked up. was very front end heavy they were terrible cars going around corners and also the brakes back then were probably terrible drum brakes in the back yeah like barely but it's everything now is four-wheel disc brakes yeah yeah standard well some people like those old cars though just because they're kind of like a time stamp. I found something that says advertised power of 300 horsepower.

Which year is that? It's like the 69 Chevy Nova SS 350. Okay, that's a 350. It's the one engine you have in it, right? Yeah, see if you can get one with a 454. That's like top of the food chain. I know like the Chevelle, 70 Chevelle had a 454 that's like top of the food chain i know like the chevelle 70 chevelle had a 454 you could get i think that was in the 400 horsepower range

but it's um again it's they're fun they rumble they make noise they feel good you're talking about performance yeah performance it's not even comparison. The Tesla Roadster is coming out. It's going to go zero to 60 in 1.1 second, and it has a jet propulsion system option. It's a SpaceX option, and they've shown it only in CGI form. They haven't showed it in an actual video form, but the video with the CGI is a representation of what this jet propulsion engine out the back, along with this preposterous four-wheel drive system and about 1,000 horsepower, takes this really light car that's probably about 2,500 pounds and goes zero to 60 in a little over one second.

That's insane. It's insane. Now, wait a minute. 2,500 pounds? Yeah, I don't think it's very big. It's a very small car. Because normally electric vehicles are very, very heavy because of the batteries. Well, there's going to be a beautiful thing about the electric vehicles

is the weight distribution is all at the bottom of the car because the batteries are all below it. Good for stability. Fantastic for stability. In fact, Jamie has the X, and the because the batteries are all below it. Good for stability. Fantastic for stability. In fact, Jamie has the X and the X literally doesn't get knocked over.

You hit them, they're like a weeble. They bounce back up. I might be wrong about the weight. It might be closer to 3,000 pounds. I'm estimating based on

like a very light, like a Porsche. Dude, even 3,000 pounds is incredibly good. Like a Toyota Corolla is 3,000 pounds. Yeah,

a Porsche like a 911, GT3, that's about 3,000 pounds is incredibly good. Like a Toyota Corolla is 3,000 pounds. Yeah, a Porsche, like a 911 GT3, that's about 3,000 pounds. P100D is 5,500 pounds. Yeah, that's a big car. Mine's big. And it's still 5,500 pounds goes zero to 60 in two and a half seconds. That's crazy. Yeah. Wait till you get in it.

You're going to shit your pants. You're not going to believe how fast they go. It doesn't seem real. But 1.1 seconds at that point, that's like fighter jet levels of G acceleration. See if you can find the video because they made a video recently that shows the Tesla Roadster. And again, it's a digital recreation or a digital representation of what it's going to actually do. That's crazy. That's what you want in your life.

You want a Tesla. You have to move to Texas to do inside, and you talk to them. You tell them, like, what kind of music do you like? What kind of music do you like? What are you into? They don't really make a sound. But what kind of music do you like? I would probably go with operatic music.

You listen to opera? Yeah. Of course you do. You're a fucking dude from a comic book. You're not even a real person. But you could say, play Beethoven. Just press a button and it will just Spotify will start playing Beethoven Yeah, you talk to it. You tell it to navigate places you tell it to call people Call John Donahue. He'll just call you I fucking love it. But again, it's like there's

Lead to a situation where driving just fundamentally changes to a point where you just become a passenger in your own car yes and it's gonna be that way autonomous vehicles Neil deGrasse Tyson was on here a couple days ago and he was talking about that that autonomous vehicles are gonna within the next 10 20 years they're gonna be everywhere it's gonna be they're gonna be communicating with each other you're just gonna sit in it and you're going to tell it where to go and it's going to do everything. In one way, it's kind of depressing because you would lose a skill, a skill of

driving, which is a pleasurable skill. But on the other hand, it's also very liberating insofar as now you have presumably hours of every day. If you commute for two hours, now you've got two extra hours in your day where you could research, learn, study. Yes. Well, I use that time almost exclusively. It's rare that I'm listening to music in my car these days. I usually listen to either a book on tape or a podcast. So I'm usually listening to something entertaining and educating.

Interesting. Educational anyway. Mostly books. I really enjoy books on tapes and cars. Because it changes commute instead of, it becomes fixated on a topic. We look upon a commute now as a very negative thing in your life, it's two hours of your day wasted.

Whereas now it's gonna be two hours of some of the most profitable part of your day. Yeah, it's really all about what you're absorbing during that time. And I think it's one of the things that people really do. Oh, here it is. Watch this. It took a lot of finding. Give me some volume, too, because the volume's kind of crazy.

I can't. It's not there. There it goes, actually. It literally sounds like a jit. Yeah. That's the SpaceX package. So that's the car. Beautiful looking car.

But watch this. 1.1 seconds, zero to 60 with that option, the SpaceX option, which is literally a thruster out the back. Like, what in the holy fuck is that? It's like watching some kind of science fiction out there. It's amazing. And what's next? What happens in, I'm just trying to throw ideas around here, you want to parallel park that car. Oh, it'll do it for you.

Okay. Guaranteed. If you stick with that accelerator, that thing's going to. Yeah. But there's a lot of cars you, I don't know if the Tesla has that option, but there are cars that will park for you. You press a button. Yeah. It has park assist.

Yeah. I've never used it. It always says, like, it's not available sometimes. I know it has it because I've got the message, like, it turns itself off. I wonder if mine must have it, too, probably. I'm sure it does. Yeah, I've never used it. I just, I'm a man.

I'm not a parallel park. It's part of being a man. But that thing, how do you parallel park that? If you touch the accelerator. No, but that's the interesting thing. The modulation is very easy. It's very easy to modulate. It's not hard to drive slowly in a Tesla.

Ah, okay. When you want it, it's there. Okay. They're smart people. I'm sure they thought of all these things. Yeah, and then apparently Porsche has an even better to drive electric car. My friend Reggie Watts has one of those Porsche Taycans, and he had a Tesla before, and he said, this

one is like all the best features of the Tesla, but with the kind of handling that you get from a Porsche. Interesting. What's going to happen when all the entrenched car companies, Toyota, Ford, Chevy, start bringing out all their, I presume they're also working on these. They're all doing it right now. They're currently doing it right now. They're currently doing it. A GM just released a 1,000-horsepower Hummer.

So they have a new pickup truck that's all electric. It's a Hummer, and it's a ridiculous beast of a vehicle. These numbers are crazy. I know. You're saying 1,000 horsepower. Can you please Google Chevy Camaro 1983 horsepower? Piece of shit. Terrible car.

The worst. The horsepower. The dark years. They have 200 horsepower. 175. Yeah, maybe. How much? 175.

Literally, this is the time when I was growing up. Imagine, what does a Chevy Camaro put out now? Like 400 horsepower. Oh, you can get one with six, six plus the ZL1. That is such a piece of shit. Oh, look at that thing. They should melt those and make hammers out of them. They're so useless.

But isn't it crazy to think that was considered like a very high performance car in the early 1980s. Yeah, it was. It probably had like a three-speed auto. Look at the Mustangs from the 80s. They were slow as hell. God, piece of shit. And there's less than 200 horsepower.

Oh, they were the darkest years for automobiles. But think about it. Those muscle cars you talked about from the 60s, they had better horsepower than cars 15 years later. Well, it was the gas crisis. Isn't that crazy to think that technology actually went backwards for 15 years? It did, but also they were using leaded gasoline. They were terrible polluting. Like if you look at photographs of Los Angeles from the 1960s and 70s versus Los Angeles in the 90s.

It's very bad. It got way better because of the changes in the admissions standards. Isn't it remarkable to think what they've done with petrochemical engines in the 1990s and beyond? The horsepower now is just unbelievable. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. Just petrochemical engines, and then electric engines make those... It's just a whole new level of that.

It really does. It makes them obsolete, and all cars will be electric within 50 years. I'm 99% positive of that I think there be enthusiasts that still want to drive around electric or gasoline combustion engines but it's once you're in one of those electric going back no they're so the the response is immediate the way they move there's no sis there's no gears of course there's no gears. Of course there's no transmission. There's no... It just goes.

Yeah. Porsche apparently has two gears. They have one for high end for efficiency and one for speed. So it's a two speed. It's crazy to think about. It's ridiculous. Yeah. That's what you need.

I wonder what the great sociological changes will be. Imagine driving coast to coast in America now. You just get in, you fall asleep in the back seat, let the car go, and you wake up 24 hours later, you're in California. I bet there'll be, when technology does sufficiently rise to the point where that's possible. But there's also an issue with charging right now.

Charging, Tesla has that nailed. They have this supercharger system, so you can find charging stations very easily. These other car companies are sort of catching up and trying to build new infrastructure to make it easier to charge, whether it's Mercedes. Mercedes has an amazing new, what is that thing called, the EQ something?

Mercedes has this incredible new sedan that they just released. It's all electric. And it's like a spaceship. You're inside of the thing. It's just Lewis from Unbox Therapy has the best EQS. It's insane. Find a picture or video of that thing. I wonder if even things like the shape of cars will change.

That's the Mercedes. That thing is fucking spectacular. I mean, it just kind of looks like a regular car until you get inside of it and you see all the screens, and I'm sure the performance is going to be off the charts too. It's just, like, look at that. I mean, you're in that thing. It doesn't make a sound.

It looks like a science fiction movie. It's crazy. Amazing. And it's supposed to be incredible to drive. But again, it's also the level of detail on inside the car is Mercedes. So it's all top of the food chain. Like the highest attention to detail and quality of build and just amazing stuff. G-Force. Oh, it shows you your G-Force?

Because they're so fast. I can't wait to take you on a drive Try to keep the g-force below like six. No, I don't take it out of ludicrous mode by the way There's all these different modes that you can put your test. There's an actual ludicrous. Oh, yeah I like fucking the old movie space ball. Yes, exactly exactly You know in space balls apparently one of the vehicles is called plaid that's why his new one is the plaid makes total sense yeah his new sedan goes zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds the sedan yeah that hasn't come out yet but it's got three electric engines and it has a range of 500 miles that's pretty impressive charge, that's the most he's ever had.

The one I have has a range of like 300 and something. What is it, like 350? What is yours? It's a little bigger than mine. It's actually a little smaller, I think, technically. Yours is bigger. Is it X? It's 220.

Oh, smaller range. Yours is what, 220? 320. 320, yeah. How long do the batteries last? That's a good question. There's also a good question as to what happens. They slowly deteriorate over time.

You don't charge them fully. When you charge it, you charge it to 80%. You're supposed to do that with your cell phone too. Most people just charge their cell phone all the way, but really you're supposed to do it at 80%. But over time, the range will lower. But I've had mine for a couple of years, and I haven't noticed any deterioration yet.

It's nothing where it concerns me. What do they do when a battery expires? That's a good question. I don't know. They probably swap them out. They want to swap them out. They want to get it to a point where when you go to a station, it only takes a couple minutes. Because instead of charging your battery, they take your battery out and put a fresh one in.

So you'll pull into some station. out and put a fresh one in. So you'll, like, pull into some station, they'll put a new one in, and then you go, like a pit stop. And so instead of waiting many hours for a massive battery to charge, they'll just swap it out with one that's fully charged. Now, the central component of these batteries, lithium, is relatively rare.

It's a conflict mineral. It's a real issue. Yeah. Where does this go in the future if the whole world switches over to lithium-powered batteries in cars? We'll go back to Afghanistan and start bombing. I mean, I don't think there's a real solution other than maybe some new battery technology. I don't think there's a real solution other than maybe some new battery technology. I think not just lithium ion, but I believe there's a new technology that they're working on.

I want to say something aluminum-based. Instead of lithium ion, there's some sort of aluminum-based battery technology that's currently in development that they think will charge faster and hold see if you can find that some aluminum based battery technology i was reading about it just the other day but i was multitasking i didn't absorb it but it was something about aluminum based batteries being the next wave of that they're going to be able to get more range. It'll charge quicker. And aluminum, though, is very common. If that's possible, like aluminum is one of the most common metals that you can find on Earth. And there's some pretty exciting developments for humanity ahead between changes in vehicles,

changes in currency, like there's big changes ahead it seems. There's a lot of changes, you know, and one of the things that Neil deGrasse Tyson and I were talking about the other day is Neuralink. That's Elon's crazy brain interface technology where they're going to start with people that have, people that are paralyzed and people that have spinal issues and they're going to use it to help them walk again and it's going to help people with various brain issues help them achieve a higher state of cognitive function but then ultimately it's going to be used to advance human cognitive function to the point where in his words you're going to be able to talk without using words now most people they say that to me it's like oh one of my stoner friends like all right like eddie bravo bro you're gonna talk

without words i'm like dude i can't wait here it is uh aluminum based battery can triple the range charge 70 times faster see there it is lithium ion powered electric cars take roughly eight to ten hours to plug so this is some new technology. These aluminum graphene batteries run on the same voltage, have similar shape to that of lithium ion batteries. However, these are hybrid battery superconductors, which allow them to retain three times more energy and takes up to 70 times lesser times to recharge. Wow.

Did they mention how much they weigh? Because lithium batteries are notoriously heavy. That's a really good question, right? Because I would imagine aluminum is generally fairly light. Yeah. Interesting. Graphene-based aluminum ion batteries provide major benefits in terms of longer battery life.

Oh, wow. Even more battery. Over 2,000 charge discharge cycles testing so far with no deterioration in performance. That's incredible. Battery safety, very low fire potential and lower environmental impact, more recyclable. And it's also like really common. The production of aluminum graphene batteries, obviously I'm talking about aluminum, not aluminum graphene. I don't even know what that is.

Batteries will not require the usage of nickel, cobalt, and copper. That's extremely important. So it will give sovereign capability and resilience around the energy sector. Aluminum is one of the most recyclable metals and will reduce the stress on mining. Interesting. Yeah, I just imagine that that's what's going to take place in all of these technology arenas, that there's just going to be new innovations that just move everything in a giant direction. But that Ne neural link thing is

the thing that confuses me the most because I feel like that is the step, that's the first step that's going to change what a human being is. Because once that actually becomes something that really does increase your bandwidth to access information. It's going to increase your ability to be more productive. So you're going to be able to generate more wealth. The haves versus the have-nots, the gap will increase even wider, which will force more people to do it. I think it's going to be like cell phones. Cell phones originally were very rare. Very few people had them. Now everyone has them and they're very cheap. I think that's probably what's going to happen with this sort of technology, which is going to

lead to a change of what it means to be a human being. A human being is not just going to be symbiotic with technology and the fact that you choose to be like carry a cell phone, wear glasses, that kind of stuff. It's going to be just you you're going to be integrated with computers and the internet you're going to be a part of this weird grid you're going to be a part of the system you're not just going to be a biological entity we're going to be hybrids fascinating i wonder what the implications of that would be well it's going to change all the unique things about people and the variabilities, right? Because with CRISPR, so with genetic engineering, right, which is they're already working on that.

So they already have the ability to, at least in a small way, manipulate human genes. So they're doing that now. They're experimenting. They're going to innovate. It's going to get better. I think CRISPR is already in its second form, and they're probably going to continue to innovate that and get better i think crispr is already in its second form and they're probably going to continue to innovate that and get it more and more efficient they've already done it in china where they've used human embryos and they've manipulated these human embryos so

it's become a giant issue globally in terms of ethics and whether or not that's okay to do like once people start doing it though and they engineer a race of super people it is is that what the implication is this is about creating super people well right now it's not right now it's about stopping diseases and I think the original I think they gave these embryos a resistance to HIV that was like the first but it impaired it gave them some sort of a cognitive improvement as well and part of that and then there's there's just like once that gets established as something that's possible to do they're gonna keep doing it and they're gonna get way better at it you know and also

it's a competitive world like if there is a means by which one nation could create people I'm presuming with higher IQs. A billion Nicky Rods. How about that? Yeah. Storming the gates. Yeah.

But they can all read minds. Jump over buildings. I mean, what it means to be a human is going to be very different a hundred years from now. You said that, Neil said that people

can talk without words. That's what Elon said. now. You said that, Neil said that people can talk without words. That's what Elon said. Sorry. Elon said that you're going to be able to talk without words. And obviously since this is his invention, I don't think he's blowing smoke. Yeah, now how does that apply?

Does that mean you can put a chip in it and get people talking multiple languages? I think what he's saying is you're going to be able to talk wirelessly through some new method now what what this new method is whether it's based on icons like jamie had an idea that it's the transmission of words not yes okay okay the transmission of thought okay like instead of or or maybe it has is actual words you can hear i mean maybe it'll be like us having this conversation we'll be going back and forth the way we're doing now but we'll be doing it entirely in silence but you and i will be able to hear it or maybe somebody could

hack into it but maybe even another step forward would be a much more complex, maybe a hieroglyphic style language of images that will be universal. So instead of one person speaking Polynesian and another person speaking British or German rather, you'll have one universal global language that we'll be able to you know all use together which would be really bizarre it's happened before in the insure yeah in the old days Latin was the universal language for European countries yeah you could go anywhere in the world speaking at least in the European world speaking Latin and and get along with people who were more educated classes classes. Well, there's been speculation about the possibility of developing a universal language in the past.

It's just never really applied in modern times. Some of them were actually pretty good. Esperanto was a universal language, so there are definitely precedents for it. Man, that's absolutely fascinating. Wild shit, right? Yeah. These are things that are going to

massively change the direction of humanity. But again, one of the unique things about people is the fact that you work with whatever, whatever hand you were dealt. You work with all these attributes and all of these deficits and pros, and you try to figure out how to do your best with what you've got you know and it's it's kind of what's cool about seeing like a little tiny guy like marcelo garcia who figures out a style versus a long guy like hodger gracie who figures out a different style and in mma it's it's really interesting right it's just because you have even more variables when you add in striking yeah yeah and just with styles of people that just in life some people get by with a great sense of humor other people get by with an insane work ethic and drive and it's weird to see all these different kinds of human beings try to

figure their way through life it's entertaining to me it's one of the more interesting things about being a person is that we vary so much. So I don't know if it's good to all become the same thing, but I have a feeling that's what's going to happen. As a general rule, once a disruptive technology gets released, there's no pulling it back. Yeah.

It's Pandora's box. Unless we get hit with an asteroid. That's true. That can end it pulling it back. Yeah. It's Pandora's box. Unless we get hit with an asteroid. That's true. That can end it all very quickly. Amazing. Interesting times. Yes. Well, we just did this for three and a half hours,

believe it or not. My God. Crazy. We've got to stop there. Time flies. Time flies. So, Who's Number One is this Friday. It streams live

on Flow Grappling I'll be there live too I can't wait to watch I really enjoy it it's one of my favorite things about Austin now is that once a month they have elite level grappling

that's awesome Craig Jones will be in the finals and who's his opponent again? Craig's taking on Luis Panza who's a interestingly a great leg lock specialist

himself a different form of leg lock attack he mostly focuses on Achilles locks he's kind of as it were interestingly a great leg lock specialist himself, a different form of leg lock attack. He mostly focuses on Achilles locks. He's kind of, as it were, like old school leg locking versus new school. That's an oversimplification, but there's some validity to it. Both of them have a very strong positional game. I think this is a great chance for both athletes to come out in different kinds of ways. Luis Panza can say, hey, listen,

old school leg locks have validity too. And Craig has a chance to either work with his approach to leg locking or he could go a completely different route and play a positional game. Craig has a very underestimated positional game. He's got great back attack, very, very impressive guard passing skills, and he's getting better at takedowns every day.

So this match could go in directions that people don't anticipate. And it's a full card, too. There's a bunch of really elite grapplers on the card. Really entertaining to watch. These guys are doing a great job putting on stacked cards. Yeah, I agree. I agree. All right. Always a pleasure. Thank you for doing this.

We appreciate it. Bye, everybody.