The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #12 with Ben Askren

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

Joe Rogan sits down with the founder the former ONE Welterweight Champion and the former Bellator Welterweight Champion, Ben Askren.

Yeah, my oldest one's super... Here we go, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ben Askren, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, I've talked about you on this podcast at least a dozen times. You are the number one guy that I'm most disappointed never fought in the UFC. Yeah, I always get, whenever you talk about me, I get like 15 texts like, Hey, Joe's talking about you now, and you know, they'll send me clips or whatever. So, obviously appreciate that.

But, yeah, I never really got to fight those top guys. And it was, for reasons beyond my control. Yeah, and you're done now. Yeah, so I said, I don't want to say I'm done, period. I said I'm done, excluding the fact that I get to fight and prove I'm number one. That would be the excluding factor. So if you could get in the UFC, you'd be willing to do it again? I mean, I don't care where it is.

I really genuinely don't. And obviously that would be the thing that makes sense. But there is legislation like the Ali Act and other things going through. So I don't know that maybe, you know, I'm still 33, so I'm not old. And, you know, if we look at GSP, he took four years off from one fight to the next fight. So it's like I'm going to age overnight. Well, your style, too. You avoided so much damage.

I didn't get hit once in 2017. Really? Yeah, I didn't get hit once. Yeah, in three fights. So, yeah. That should tell people you were fighting in 1FC, which is a big Asian organization. It's like the Asian version of the UFC. Yeah, so 1FC started in 2012, I think.

Obviously, my contract with Bellator came up in 2013. And then there was that negotiation process. And obviously, it went south. And what happened there? You were the champ of Bellator. Yes. And then all of a sudden, you left. And everybody was like, so you're still undefeated, right?

I'm undefeated. 18-0. So what the fuck happened that Bellator let the champion go? Well, that wasn't what happened. No. And there's so much misinformation out there. And, you know, I'm popular, but I'm not that popular. And so lots of times my story gets mistold because I get spoken over by other people, right?

And they don't hear what I say. So here's what happened. Obviously, so prior to me and Bellator, Hector and Eddie were the ones that left, right? Hector Lombard and Eddie Alvarez. Eddie Alvarez was now in the UFC. Both of them. Both of them. Middleweight champ and then the lightweight champ.

And they both got taken care of pretty well. But if you remember Eddie's situation—I don't know if you remember this—he got an offer from the UFC, still under the matching period with Bellator. Bellator says, we matched it, right? And in terms of what was in the contract, it was matched, right? But because Bellator has no pay-per-view venue, well, if UFC says we'll pay you on pay-per-view, Bellator says, well, we will too. But that's not real life, right? That's fictitious. They've done two pay-per-view shows ever.

And they've never met any type of threshold. So, you know, they say it matches, but it doesn't say. I don't know if you remember, but they went to court over it. And the UFC won. Eddie got the right to. I'm sorry, he didn't win. He somehow did like a one more fight in Bellator and then went to the UFC. I don't know exactly what the finality of that case was. But anyways, when that happened, his contract became public knowledge.

Right. And so a lot of UFC fighters were pissed because they gave him a whole bunch of money. And so when I was 12 and 0, I had my last fight in Bellator against Andrei Kreshkov, July 30th, maybe 31st of 2013, beat him up pretty good. And then I had a 12-month matching period. And so what was expressed to me by the UFC brass was that you need to get rid of your matching clause and we will make you an offer. But we will not make you an offer until

that happens. Get rid of your matching clause. How do you do that? Well, here's how I went about doing it. Because it's 12 months, right? I'm not going to sit down for 12 months. So I'd call Bjorn and say, hey Bjorn, I'm not going to resign. Bjorn is the guy who was running Bellator at the time.

Correct, yeah. And now he got fired. Yeah. And Bjorn had a terrible reputation, but I never, I had a decent relationship with him. I never, like, butted heads too bad. So every day they said, Bjorn, let me go. I'm not coming back. And then so everyone says, well, Bellator didn't want to resign me.

Well, that's not true at all. Every day it's Bjorn, let me go. Bjorn, let me go. Because, that's not true at all. Every day, it's, Bjorn, let me go. Bjorn, let me go. Because I love challenges. What I love more than anything in the world is a challenge to myself. If you look at my wrestling career, that's what it's all about. Taking the next best thing every single time. And so, yeah.

So, finally, and all this time, Dana in the UFC is saying, we want Ben Askren. We want Ben Askren. I'm ranked number seven in the world, somewhere around there, 12-0. And so I remember I was going to the Asian food store because I was going to make some tonka soup. And Bjorn calls me and said, you're released.

Full, full, you're released. You can go. I said, I appreciate that. So Friday morning, it was Thursday night. Friday morning, it's in November sometime, maybe mid-November. Morning, they fax over the release. My management faxes it to UFC headquarters, and all of a sudden

that afternoon, there's a little scrum where everyone's asking Dana questions. And then Dana says, we're not interested in Ben Askren. And I said, wait, what just happened there? Right? Because for the last three months, they were saying, we were interested, we're interested, we were interested, we were interested.

Now I finally produced this full release from Bellator that I got and now they're not interested. And so I said, wow, I just got caught in the middle of this.

So was there a reason given? Well, okay, so then Monday, so then I say, F that. I bought a plane ticket to Vegas for Monday.

So that was Friday that happens. I said, fuck that. I'm going a plane ticket to Vegas for Monday. So that was Friday that happens. I said, Fuck that. I'm going to Vegas. I'm not taking this shit, you know? So Monday I buy my plane ticket to Vegas. I fly out to Vegas, to UFC headquarters. I met with Lorenzo. Dana was on the little speakerphone dealie.

And they offered me a Zufa contract, but it would be confidential. And I would have to fight one fight for the World Series of Fighting, And they offered me a Zufa contract, but it would be confidential, and I would have to fight one fight for the World Series of Fighting, which is like, well, that's bizarre. What? Yeah. One fight for the World Series of Fighting? Exactly. What was your relationship with the World Series of Fighting?

I don't know. It was like a feeder organization at that time. Something, yeah. In a way. Yeah. It was Marlon Marais, Justin Gagey, both those guys came from champs over there to the UFC. I think the relationship is very hazy between the old World Series of Fighting and the UFC because there was also people that went the other way, right?

Andrei Lavsky gets dropped from the UFC, goes to World Series, Anthony Johnson, boom, all these people. So they say, one fight, one fight, World Series of Fighting, we will pay, Zufa will pay you. But you do one fight. Okay. And I say, well,. But you do one fight. Okay. I say, well, that's effed up. But okay. I said, I don't think anyone's going to go for it, but I'll do it. So I leave.

And about six hours later, I got a phone call that says that deal is no longer available. We are not going to make you an offer. Yeah. So, wow. And you have no idea why. Well, here's my guess. I've never got to sit face-to-face with him and say, what was your problem with me? I think there's four things in my mind.

Number one, he didn't really like me. Stemming from the, I called him out on the steroid thing. You know, where he said, it's impossible. And this is where I disagree. It's impossible to test all UFC athletes. And I said, well, that's not true. USADA does it all over the world for all kinds of athletes, right? You can do it. It's impossible, and this is where I disagree, it's impossible to test all UFC athletes. And I said, well, that's not true. USADA does it all over the world for all kinds of athletes, right? You can do it.

It's just expensive. But let's just call it what it is. You're a private business. You don't have to do drug testing. Well, obviously, they do it now, so you were right. They do it now, yeah. They do it through USADA, so you were totally right. Yeah, so I was correct.

But that was, you know, when Dana is wrong in an argument, and he's got this huge army that follows him, and he said, I'd rather, I think his quote was back, I'd rather watch flies fuck than Ben Askren fight, you know? I think he said something like, Ambien takes Ben Askren to go to sleep. Yeah, there's a few of them. So the personal attack started, right? So that's number one. Number two, my fighting style is not highly attractive. But I also think that's a little bit of fake news because if you look at George St. Pierre's

consistently, now obviously McGregor's trumped him, but only a couple times, but if you look at consistent bases, George St. Pierre's the number one draw of all time. He heavily relied on takedowns and ground and pound. I mean, he didn't have a finish in like five years or something. Let me say what my take has

always been on you and that style is that it's important and that it really works. Yeah, absolutely. What you're able to do really works. And I've always said this, and it was proven Saturday night in the Stipe Miocic-Francis Ngannou fight, wrestling is the most important part of MMA. Absolutely. The ability to take the fight to the ground. Obviously, Stipe has a lot of other attributes.

He took tremendous punches in that fight. I mean, I know you didn't get a chance to watch it. I saw some highlights, though. Holy shit. The first round was chaos. Francis Ngannou is a terrifying guy. Stipe took the shots, used great movement, used striking of his own, but most importantly, after a while, got his wrestling going.

Then once he got Ngannou to the ground, Ngannou didn't have any answers. He didn't know what to do. What you've been able to do to guys like Douglas Lima, who just fought Rory McDonald for the Bellator title. Really good fight. And Korosh Goff, who's another fantastic fighter who has beaten a lot of really top fight guys. You're able to use your wrestling and completely nullify all their striking and offense. And that's a huge part of fighting.

Fighting is not what's exciting for people to watch. Fighting is what actually works. And what you've been able to do time and time again is take these guys who look like world beaters and completely nullify their offense, take them to the ground, and beat the shit out of them. That's huge. That's very, very important.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, we can get back to the UFC thing later. But so, yeah, I mean, when I started fighting, right, it was just like, hey, let's go fight. I didn't really make coaching. And so I didn't move to Duke's until 2010, I think. So I started, no, no, 2011. I'm sorry. Because I was in Arizona.

I was coaching for Arizona State University. But when I moved there, I know, hey, there's a lot of elite strikers in this gym. I said, but I'm never going to be an elite striker. But if no one can hit me, they can't beat me. They're not going to outlast me. They're not going to out-grapple me. They're not going to beat me. If they can't knock me out, they're not going to beat me, plain and simple.

So my whole goal was, how do I not get hit? I don't need to be a great striker hitting people. I just need to not get hit. If you can't knock me out, I'm going to eventually get you on the ground, and I'm going to beat your ass, right? And so that was kind of my whole goal when I got into MMA, is how do I not get knocked out, right? And so, like you said, obviously I found a really good way to do that,

and it added a lot of longevity to my career where I wasn't taking damage that a lot of other people were taking. And I think there's also a lot of other things to being a really high-level wrestler that, you know, besides obviously you can control where the fight happens, right? But there's a lot of other things that high-level wrestling provides us, right, that came from that world that other disciplines don't get. You know, a lot of competition. We compete thousands of times, right?

How to get our mind right. These wrestlers are just strong. I mean, there's just a different strength. Actually, I got to go work out with Jordan Burroughs last week. He was a Midtown World Champ. And it's like you forget how strong wrestlers are. Like you grab him and you're like, good God, this guy is like, you know, I don't feel that from MMA people.

I grab him and I'm like, oh my, everywhere. It's like there's nowhere he's weak. Very, very disciplined, right? Because a wrestler is like, we've been in this system from youth wrestling to high school wrestling to college wrestling where we're under coaches and have a very strict training plan and understand how to put a training regimen together where

a lot of other martial arts don't have that kind of structured system. So I think there's a lot of advantages that we as wrestlers have when we come into mixed martial arts. And if I could add to that, the intention is pure. It's pure for competition because there's no financial reward. It's not a bunch of people that are getting into wrestling because they want to get rich. It's a bunch of people that really want to prove that they're the best.

And so you have so many top flight guys that are incredibly mentally strong feeding off of each other, knowing that they're going to be competing against each other. And almost no financial possibilities except for coaching. Well, yeah, there's a – I mean, now – so 2018 to 2008 when I was wrestling and then when I decided to make that jump to MMA, there is a lot better financial structure for senior-level athletes. Now, none of them are getting rich, and there's only about a dozen of them making a decent living, right?

Yeah. Which is crazy. There's thousands of wrestlers. Exactly. So your point's mostly correct, but there are a handful of top United States athletes now who could do nothing but wrestle. When I was in 2008, when I was training,

that wasn't even the case. I had to go do camps. I was coaching at Missouri, so I was doing other things in addition to wrestling. So like a top Olympic athlete, what else would they do to make money? Well, so like in 2008, I was doing a lot of camps, right? You'd travel, what else would they do to make money? Well, so like in 2008, I was doing a lot of camps, right?

You'd travel around the country, do camps, make money, coach a college team. I was making money that way. So a handful of things like that. It wasn't just wake up and train every single day. But the athletes today that you were saying. Now that's what they're doing. That's it. Coaching and a bunch of different things. No, no, no. Some of them don't have to

do anything now. So you're saying they just do it from – so where are they getting the money? Jordan Burroughs and James Green, for example. Sponsorships are slightly more lucrative than they were then. There's something called the Regional Training Center System, which most major colleges have one. It's a lot more lucrative. And that's fundraising, right? They're not earning money. The RTC people go say, hey, rich guy, would you like to fund this program that will help us develop Olympic athletes?

Sure. Okay, right? And then the United States, USOC has slightly more funding given to USA Wrestling than in the past. Well, it's the tragic story of John DuPont. I mean, that's literally why that whole – people have seen that movie. What was that movie called? Foxcatcher. Foxcatcher.

Yeah, awful. It's a crazy story of Dave and Mark Schultz and this millionaire, billionaire crazy guy who wound up shooting Dave Schultz and was this weirdo guy that was running this camp and these guys kind of got stuck training with this guy. Because, I mean, and that's 96 was when Schultz got shot, right? And so that's 12 years prior to, you know, my Olympic birth. And so then it's even worse. I mean, these guys are literally making nothing. And then we can go back to the argument of amateurism and the Olympics is stupid,

which was abolished. Like, 92, the dream team was kind of totally abolished with amateurism. But, yeah, those guys in that era, the 84, 88, 92, the Dream Team, was kind of totally abolished with amateurism. But, yeah, those guys in that era, the 84, 88, 92, they were making nothing. And so when this guy, John DuPont, offers them money and stipends and places to live, they don't really have a better option. And it's freaking sad, to be honest about it. And then, obviously, USA Wrestling sanctioned him because he gave USA Wrestling a lot of money.

So, yeah, it was a really bad thing. And so we're doing a lot better in 2018 than we were 10 years ago and way, way better than we were doing 20 years ago. Yeah, the Olympic thing where they try to treat the Olympics like it's an amateur sport event, it's a business. You're making billions and billions of dollars off these athletes who get paid zero. To me, it's disgusting. It is. I think it's just this relic of ancient thinking,

and these guys are using it to steal money from young athletes. That's what I think. I think the whole thing is theft. Yeah, I usually don't know who's more evil, the USOC or the IOC or the NCAA, because the NCAA runs right along the same lines. I think both are pretty evil, and both are archaic, and both need to be changed. And, you know, if you could abolish the NCAA and the IOC, that'd be fantastic for athletes worldwide.

Yeah, well, especially when you look at the football teams that are getting literally billions and billions of dollars every year. And these athletes are ruining their lives. I mean, you have football players that maybe play one, two seasons. If they're lucky, they get their back blown out, their legs get blown out, and then they never have an NFL career, and meanwhile, the university has made tons of money off of them.

Tons of money. And they make nothing. Yeah, and to make that even worse, because I actually had a whole podcast about this argument with someone, and to make that, and we're on the same side of this, but to make it even worse, if you're an NCAA athlete, Joe, you can't even make money off your own image and likeness. Yeah, you can't have a YouTube channel. It's effing insane.

Yeah, it's crazy. So not only will they not pay you anything, which I think we can debate and argue on that, but the fact that they can't make money off their own image and likeness, it should be criminal for that to happen. Jimmy, you were telling me about this, right? Like a guy got in trouble for having a YouTube channel. Yeah, he was a punter for like a college football team or a kicker. Do you remember his name? I don't remember his name at all. No, no, no.

And there was a wrestler from the University of Minnesota. He made a rap album. And he had to either quit the wrestling team or donate all the money back or something like that. And it's like rap and wrestling, they have nothing to do with each other. The fact that he can't go make money off freaking recording an album is mind-blowing. It's disgusting because you're keeping a kid from being industrious. You're keeping a young guy who's trying to find his way through the world. You're keeping him from being successful.

But that kind of success, like figuring out a way to make some money off of your name, doing rap, that could lead to all sorts of paths in life. Like he's learning as a young guy, like, hey, look, I could be industrious. I can go do this. I can be creative. I can go do that. Like this is what we should be encouraging people to do, to take chances and make money. And the idea that you're saying like somehow or another this spoils his amateur athletic standing is just stupidity.

I think it's fucking disgusting. It drives me nuts. Agreed, 100%. It just drives me crazy. So we're back to your situation with the UFC. So the UFC says we're not interested in you. No offer. No offer.

So Bellator has released you. So I had spent three months telling Bellator I'm not coming back. Do you think they played you? Do you feel like the UFC might have played you? Absolutely. They played me 100%. So, okay, so the reasons. Dana doesn't like me, number one.

Number two, my style, not great. Didn't you say something like he's a bald, steroided something or another? It was mostly after the fact, you know, after that went down that I really tortured him. But, you know, the original one was he's lying about the USADA thing. So that was the simpler. So those people who say me and Dana had beef prior to me not getting an offer. Have you met him? Yeah.

I mean, yeah. Have you talked to him? We've never had an at-length conversation. He's a great guy. A lot of people get the wrong impression of him. I mean, I really love the guy. Yeah. You and I have had different experiences with the man.

I'm sure we have. I always feel like I should be there when people have experienced it. Let me let you know the Dana I know. Yeah. So that would be two. Number three, I think obviously stealing a key piece away from Bellator was important to them. And then number four, I think they thought I really had the ability to be their champion. And if someone can be a Bellator champion and make this transition directly to UFC and then be the UFC champion,

I didn't remember this when they're going on, Bellator's now on Spike now, that Bellator would use that to say, look, we're the same. He was a champion here, he's a champion there. So I think those four things are, and hey, I've never got to sit down face-to-face with Dana and say, why was there no offer?

I've never got, you know, like when Anthony Pettis was the champ and I'm helping coach him or Tyron was, I haven't had more than five words of Dana in passing, right? And so it would be really interesting to me to sit down and say, tell me for real, because I have my assumptions on what the deal was, but I don't really know. And then if I have to add number five,

number five is I think he got the idea that I would never be a yes man, which I'm not going to be, never would be, where Dana really kind of likes the yes man champion. I mean, you see he's got some heat with Tyron. He's got some heat with Stipe, as we saw on Saturday night. And Dana really struggles with the personalities that won't cater to what he wants to happen. Well, fighters very rarely are yes men. And that's by nature of who they are. A little bit, yeah.

You know, especially the really good ones. Especially as things start going well and start going their way. They realize they're the fucking man. I mean, if you're the guy who's running the division, you're the guy who's running the division. And you're not going to take any shit from anybody. Yeah, but that's... And you see as some of these guys ascend, right, up the ranks, they do...

John Jones started having trouble with Dana, right, but didn't have it until he was- Well, Jon Jones was having all sorts of problems. Well, he's got trouble with everybody. His problems, I think, had very little to do with Dana and more to do with his actions outside of the cage. I mean, inside the octagon, and the way he was promoted, he was promoted fantastic, but he's just crazy. Yeah.

Jon's crazy, you know? Jon is crazy. Jon needs a babysitter. I mean, Jon's just crazy. Yeah. John's crazy. John is crazy. John needs a babysitter. I mean, John's the baddest motherfucker at 205 ever. He just needs a babysitter. How anyone let him drive a car anymore when you got that much money is beyond me. Like, pay your buddy $40,000 a year. Exactly.

And have him drive you permanently. Like, why he was driving his own car, that one's beyond me. Well, they didn't know until they bought him a Bentley and then he wrapped it around a tree. I mean, that's when they should have known. And then, but then there was the other one where he hit and ran. That was, the hit and run was after that one. Yep.

The hit and run was after that one. And then there was the other one where he got pulled over speeding in his Corvette. And he told the cop to go fuck himself. Terrible decision. What are you doing? He's a fucking wild dude. Yes. That's why he's so good. It's Yes. That's why he's so good.

It's one of the reasons why he's so good. Absolutely. But then you've got to put safeguards in place, right? Yes. Like you're making how many million a year? Multiple, at least. For sure. You can't pay someone 40 grand to drive you around.

Listen, you're preaching to the choir. I mean, I wish I could clone me and send me all to all these camps and be like, John, John, John, listen to me. Everything's going to be fine. I got a driver. We got a Cadillac. Got an Escalade out here. Get in the car.

Wherever you want to go. We're going places, baby. We're going to have some fun. But no driving. No driving. None. We don't need driving. We got music.

We got fun. Let's go. Oh, my gosh. I mean, seriously. Yeah. Well, that's what you would have if you had like, you know, I don't know what he's doing. I've never been to Albuquerque. I don't know what he's doing. I've never been to Albuquerque. I don't know how he's living.

But you can't babysit everybody. The UFC has 500 fighters on its roster. I mean, how many of those guys are prone to wild behavior? I would say 350. A lot of them. Yeah, yeah. Most of them, right? High-risk males that fight in a sport where you have the potential to be hurt every single

time you step out on the job. Yeah. But when you're making millions of dollars, you've got to put safeguards against yourself. Yeah, but I think also what makes John so good is his self-confidence. And he probably is like, I got it. Yeah, I fucked up before, but I got it now. So I'm really into sports psychology. And I want someone to write this book because no one's ever written it.

But I think there's this, I call it the hypocritical elite athlete. So there's two sides to every coin, right? And if you're a really elite athlete, you need both sides of those coins. And I'll give you a great example because this is kind of what you're talking about. There's these guys who are ultra elite preparers. They eat right. They sleep right. They train right.

They do everything right, right? But then if one little thing goes wrong, it messes, they train right, they do everything right. But then if one little thing goes wrong, it messes with them. If they don't get the right food or their weight cuts bad, they start panicking. And then on the opposite side of the coin, there's these cowboys. And they're just like, I'm not going to eat right. I'm not going to sleep right. I'm not going to do anything right. But when time to step in the cage, I'm going to fight my ass off and nothing's going to bother me. And so you so you need, you need both sides of those coins to make, to make it whole. And so you want someone ideally who does everything right.

But at the same time, when, when something goes wrong or their toe hurts or whatever, they can just say, well, it doesn't really matter. I'm going to go compete anyways. Right. You want to have both sides of those. That's where I think a lot of the UFC fighters are more on the cowboy side of it. Like, well, I'm not really gonna do a lot of things, right. But I'm just going to go, I'm a fighter. I'm just going to go both sides of those. That's why I think a lot of the UFC fighters are more on the cowboy side of it. Like, well, I'm not really going to do a lot of things right, but I'm just going to go fight. Like cowboy. That'd be a fantastic example.

Yeah, the namesake of my argument. Yeah, that's a good point. And it's probably one of the more fascinating things about any form of high-stress, high- level competition is there's no real guidelines of how to prepare your mind. You know, I mean, everybody teaches you how to wrestle. Everybody teaches you how to kickbox. There's all these martial arts schools that teach you technique. There's very few real like rock solid programs of how to manage your mind. Absolutely.

to how to manage your mind. Absolutely. Like, I think you should be taught almost like in a step-by-step basis, like, hey, you get a flat tire. Do you kick your car and scream, or do you just go, this is what it is, and, hey, I could have been born in Ethiopia with no feet, right? I could be living in a fucking coal mine somewhere. No, I'm lucky. I'm fortunate.

This is nothing. This is a minor setback. No, and so, like. I actually started going to graduate school for sports psychology. I got nine of the 36 credits done. And then I actually got a scholarship to go further and get paid for. But I was

traveling so much. That was 2007-8 when I was trying to make the Olympic team and I was going all the time. And then once I was out of school for a year, I was just like, there's no freaking way. I'm not going back to school. I'm not going to sit in a classroom. I'm not going to freaking write papers. I'll still study sports psych on my own, right?

And so actually every Monday, I do something called the Mental Monday on one of my Facebook pages and just people message me questions and I talk about the mental aspect because you're right, there aren't enough people that talk about it. And then in wrestling,

there's actually this company that's being highly successful called Wrestling Mindset and they have a training program for athletes' minds because there's nothing out there. Is there a website for this? Yeah, it's wrestlingmindset.com. No kidding. That's great.

And they're starting to... That'll apply to everything. Well, they're starting to expand into different disciplines. But you're right. I think there's these general principles of sports psych, which can kind of go into any domain, right? And you're 100% correct that every single individual is different, right? And one of the, like for me, I'm an overthinker, right? I'm obsessive. I'll do something over and over and over and over again, right?

And so like when I was 14, I was at this big national tournament and I was obsessing about who I'd have to wrestle and all this stuff and it wore me out mentally and I got my ass kicked, right? And my coach said, hey, I was that person many, many years ago, and it helped me just to talk about fishing, right? Because I don't want to think about what I'm going to do. I'm not one of those guys. Because if I think about it too much, I'll obsess.

And so ever since age 15, I've always taught myself and trained myself to not think about the competition within, like, you know, six hours, right? So maybe the day before I can think about it, a couple days before I not think about the competition within like you know six hours right so maybe the day before I can think about it a couple days before I can think about it but like even when I'm in MMA locker room I'm not thinking about my fight my mind's off of it because if I'm not if I don't understand what my strategy is going to be

by six hours before and I haven't trained myself by six hours before I'm fucked right I'm already fucked like what am I going to do six hours I'm going'm fucked. I'm already fucked. What am I going to do? Six hours. I'm going to come up with a brilliant strategy in six hours. I intentionally fly people to my fights who are just my friends, who have no intention of telling me what to do MMA-wise, and just want to bullshit backstage. That's really smart.

Because it keeps me really calm. Because otherwise I start obsessing. And that's going to lead to something really negative. So that's like one thing is where, you know, but some people are the opposite, like they F off too much, and you kind of got to bring them back to focus, right? Right. You know, another sports psych concept is what level of energy do you want going into the competition? Some people, you got to get them amped up. Some people, most people, you got to calm them down quite a bit, like let's relax, let's execute, because when you're too amped up, you're not going to execute.

Right. So I think there's a lot of these sports psych concepts that can cross over many different genres. But you're right. No one trains you about it. I think it's a huge part of the sport. And it's overlooked, because the sport is not just, and I think this is true with every sport, the sport's not just the movements that you make. It's what's going on inside the machine. The manager of the body is the mind.

And if the manager is like poorly formed and the structure is all out of whack and you have like whenever a problem comes up, you fall right into a pit. All these things should be addressed. And you should develop this mindset and develop the ability to manage your mindset, I think, at a young age. I think it's really critical. Yeah. No, I totally agree.

And, you know, I think one interesting thing, which I don't know if it's going to happen in MMA or not. We'll see, right? There's very few people who came from a wrestling background that are head coaches of MMA teams, right? Who came from this very, very structured environment of, say, college wrestling. It's like you go to – I went to, I remember my first training camp, I went to American top team in Florida and I show up, it's 11 o'clock practice show, but 11 o'clock,

uh, where's, where's everyone at? Right. And then we started at 1145, like 45 minutes late. And then, so the next day I'm like,

well, am I supposed to show up at 1145 or should I show up at 11? Cause we say 1145, I can show up. So I show up at 1130 and then they started at 1120, you can show up at 11.40. So I show up at 11.30 and then they start at 11.20. You know, like what the hell? Whereas in college wrestling,

if you're a minute late, you're going to get punished in college wrestling, right? It's a very structured, organized system. So I'm very curious to see the day where there is an MMA team that is very structured

like a college wrestling team would be. I think it would be very effective towards performance for athletes. But then again, you are going to have, it's a different structure because college wrestling team would be. I think it would be very effective towards performance for athletes. But then again, you are going to have a different structure because college wrestlers are poor, right, where you're going to have a bunch of MMA fighters who get rich and then say, well, I don't want to do what you're saying right now. How are you going to make them, right?

They're the one paying your paycheck. So it does become an interesting circumstance. But I think if there was someone who ran a highly structured mixed martial arts team as structured as a college team, I think they would have a gigantic amount of success. I think their guys would get a lot better a lot faster. And I think you'd see a really interesting dynamic develop between the high-level athletes and the coaches. Well, I think they're still trying to figure out what's the best way to coach fighters.

And I think everybody's got their own way of doing it. You know, for us, the hobby's way is different than the way they do it at American Top Team. Matt Hume is doing it different than the way Duke does it. Everybody's got their own way. And the only way you could tell is how well the athletes compete. I mean, that's the only way you really find out who's correct and who needs to make adjustments. Yeah. And it's really hard in fighting because, I mean, even your highest level camps, how many, say Bellator and UFC, how many high level MMA fights do they have per year? Maybe 30. I think that'd be a lot for most of these teams.

Right. And so you only get 30 sample sizes, right? Whereas a college wrestling team, you're going to have, between everybody on the team, the all 40 guys, you're going to have at least 1,000 matches every single year. Minimum, right? And then, obviously, every event is scored by team. Every dual meet is scored by team. Every NCAA championship is scored by team. So you get a very good indication of what coach is doing it right

and what coach is doing it wrong. And then obviously with the recruiting process, the coaches that are doing it right now get the next crop of the best talent, right? And so you have a very good idea of what's working, what is not working. Where in MMA, I think we struggle to see that because the sample size isn't large enough to give us a really, really direct correlation. Now, you were able to instigate your strategy in pretty much every single one of your MMA fights. The only fight where you really struggled is a Jay Heron fight.

Jay Heron fight, yeah. Yeah, that was a close fight. What was different in that fight? Well, so that was my first fight at Duke's. Obviously, Jay Heron's pretty damn good, too. We don't want to take that away from him. I think he was ranked number 16 in the world or something at that point in time. So that was my first fight at Duke's. I think the biggest mistake I made, I mean, and obviously at that time, I'm literally

two years into my fighting career. Right. So I stopped wrestling completely. I didn't do one wrestling practice. I moved to Duke's August 1st. Well, I moved to Wisconsin August 1st, started training at Duke's August 1st. I fought three months later at the end of October.

I literally did not do one wrestling practice. So what were you doing? I was striking like six times a week. I was doing jiu-jitsu a handful of times a week, and then I was doing conditioning. So after that fight, my wrestling, well, and then actually I went to, my brother was living in New York at the time.

My brother's also an NCAA champ. Went to visit him for Thanksgiving, and he whooped my ass. And I'm like, I freaking suck at wrestling. Like, you know, like I went cold turkey. And so it's like, okay, I don't need to wrestle every day to be great at wrestling anymore, but I need to wrestle once a week, twice a week, with high-level competition. So at that point in time, and for pretty much the rest of my career, I would go to one of the local colleges once a week or twice a week

just to keep my skills sharp. And so I think that was the biggest mistake I made in the Huron fight. I didn't wrestle at all prior to it. But Jay Huron was good. He was also a Division I college wrestler. He knew what he was doing also. But I think if I had to pinpoint one thing, that would be it. Isn't it fascinating that a guy with as much wrestling experience as you have,

all you have to do is take some time off and everything degrades? Well, it's timing. It's all timing, right? So you take three months off, your timing is going to go to shit. I mean, literally. It's just amazing. I tell you, I wasn't doing one practice. But that was also what helped me get the striking thing down,

is I was doing, and this is what I think, you actually made this point, who the hell were you talking to, about wrestlers are willing to go in the environment. I was striking six to seven times a week. How many strikers go and wrestle six to seven times a week? It's a real problem. None of them do. It's a real problem.

They don't like it. They refuse to. Well, there was Francis Ngannou in his training camp. When I talked to people outside afterwards, it's crazy. Before, everyone was saying, oh, my God, he's in tremendous shape. Everything's amazing. And then afterwards, it was like, oh, he doesn't train on the ground. What?

Crazy. He doesn't train on the ground. Yeah. Like, all he wants to do is strike. Yeah. Well, you can't let him do that. Absolutely not. You can't let him.

He's going to fight a Division I wrestler. Yeah. Like, how is he going to do this? How is he going to stand up? Is he going to somehow or another magically stuff all the takedowns? You have to train that. You have to train it. Yeah.

But you've got to train it. But then even when people train it, these high-level strikers, they don't want to do it right. Like I said, when I go to Dukes, when I started at Dukes, and it went down to four times a week where we were striking, right? But in the beginning, it was six or seven sessions a week I'm striking, right? And so I'm immersed in that culture. I have to learn. You can't not learn when you're doing it six or seven times a week.

But these strikers, they want to do one wrestling practice a week, two wrestling practices a week. Well, if you're here and they're here, how are you going to catch them by doing one practice a week? It's freaking impossible. I mean, if I got to be in charge of an MMA guy's camp, and I don't know. I coach wrestling. I love coaching the kids. I don't know if I ever want to coach MMA people.

I would consider for someone high level. But you've got to immerse yourself. You literally have to take three months and freaking wrestle every single day. Just wrestle. You have to build those skills. You're not going to learn something well doing it one time a week. You aren't going to do it. Period.

I completely agree. And I think that it all depends on what the athlete brings to the table. Some guys have a little bit of wrestling and then maybe they need to work more on submissions. Maybe some they need to work more on submissions. Maybe some guys need to work more on their striking. They get hit too much. I mean, it's every single fighter, there's a different recipe,

and you have to figure out what that recipe is. And it's hard because it's like the only way you find out is how well they perform in competition. And how many times do you even get the chance to do that? Three a year? Three a year, yeah. Maybe. Yeah, and so that's that. And listen, so I'm not saying a striker has to do six sessions a week for three years straight.

But I'm saying take three months. Take six months. Immerse yourself in that. Yeah, be obsessed. Be obsessed. Learn those skills. Figure it out. And then after that, it might be once a week, twice a week, three times a week.

And then after that, it might be once a week, twice a week, three times a week. But then when we start considering the CTE factors, which I'm not totally sold on CTE yet. It's because you don't get hit. No, you know, this started— You're the poster boy for wrestling as a martial art, if you really think about it. Yeah, no, for sure. So I watched Concussion. I was actually flying to my fight in April of 2016. I watched it.

I said, shit, that's scary. I sparred two more times the rest of my career. So my career was 19 more months. I sparred twice. I didn't do it. Just because you didn't want to get hit? Yeah. I felt it was an unnecessary risk.

Well, there was a recent study that came out just a few days ago that said that it's repeated subconcussive hits that are causing CTE, not concussions. Yeah. But the study that made me really question the CTE phenomenon was they did that study where they studied a whole bunch of professional football players. And it was like 100 percent. It was like 99 percent have CTE, right? But then they studied people who had played football for any length of time. Any length of time. And it was like still like 80% of the people.

And it's like, well, F, I can't live my life in a bubble. How can 80% of people who have ever played football? I mean, how many American males, what percentage of American males walking around at 40 years old today played some level of football? It's like got to be 80%. So you're telling me 70% of America is walking around with CTE? Or American males? Like that's crazy. No, but that's real.

Come on. That really is what's happening. No, but you've got to think there's got to be some kind of low threshold because otherwise 40 years down the road, if everybody played football and everyone who played football has CTE, everyone's going to be walking around like... A lot of people are walking around like that. Come on. I think that's what's going on.

Or is it the diet? It might be the Diet Coke. It'll be a walking around like that. Come on. I think that's what's going on. Or is it the diet? It might be the Diet Coke. A little bit of that. I think way more people have some form of brain damage than real life. Really? Yes. Yeah, I do. Well, I think in the world of martial arts, I know so many guys.

Yeah. But let's talk about not martial arts. Okay. Not martial arts. Just regular people. Football players. I think football players, it's even worse because you're running. You're running at each other, clashing heads.

I mean, you watch football. I mean, the damage those guys take is crazy. It's once in a UFC, you'll see like a wild head kick KO. Sure, boom. In football games, these guys are literally running at each other. I mean, it's crazy. One team's running this way, the other team's running that way. And they slam into each other.

And these guys are 250, 300 pounds. That impact, the jarring of your brain. Plus they have helmets on, which allows them to be more confident, clashing into each other. I think a giant percentage of those guys. But you think, so like I said, so that one study said it was something around 80% of anyone who ever played any level of football for any length of time has CTE. That means, like, I mean, if we take the American population, at least 50% of American men played football at some point in their life.

Probably, yeah. I think they have CTE. So we're talking about, like, a gigantic population. Yeah, I think there's levels of CTE, though. I mean, I think, you know, you get to the point where you're like Joe Frazier. You could barely talk before he died. Rest in peace. But then you also get to guys that are just like a little forgetful and don't know why or impulsive and don't know why. You know, I mean, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of weird stuff that comes with CTE. I've studied it pretty

extensively. And the more studies that I've read on it, the more I've gotten really disturbed. So do you think there's maybe just a low threshold for what they call CTE? Well, there's also genes that certain people have. What was that gene? Rhonda Patrick talked about it. I don't remember what it was. She's fantastic. She's amazing, right? Yeah. And she was talking about some genes make you more susceptible for traumatic brain injury than other ones. Like if you have it, you are many times more likely to develop CTE. But then also, and then so the other thing that I would, is out of curiosity to me when they do the CTE studies, especially with, they're doing, you know, after death with these football players,

right, that were, so now if they're dying, they're probably played in the 60s, 70s, 80s, that time period. Steroid use, very, very high. And drug use is also very high in that culture. steroid use very, very high, and drug use is also very high in that culture, and alcohol, which I include in drugs. So it's like did those things contribute? Is it like a mitigating factor, or is it like going to create this crazy storm of brain damage that you're freaking running into people like this, then you're doing steroids, then you're freaking drinking a pack of beer.

Then you're doing some cocaine. Like that, that can't be good for you. Right. Can that be good for you? It can't be. No, it can't be. Yeah. Yeah.

Especially the pills. A lot of them get caught. Or the pain pills. Yeah. They get caught up on pain pills. That's a, that's a big one, man. We just found out that Tom Petty died from fucking pain pills. Yeah.

My wife and I were talking about how sad that was. That, uh, man, he couldn't have a sense of, uh, cause my wife and I both love Tom Petty died from fucking pain pills. Yeah, my wife and I were talking about how sad that was. Man. He couldn't have a sense of, because my wife and I both love Tom Petty's music, but how at 66 years old he was still not so okay with himself that he was jamming pills down his throat. He didn't have a sense of, I have had great accomplishments, I've had a great life, I have people around me that love me. It's got to be a sad, lonely thing when you're overdosing on pills,

I would have to assume. I don't want to guess, but I would imagine he's in some kind of pain if he's taking those opiates. He had a hip fracture he was recovering from. Let me tell you something, man. My friend Amber from the UFC, she hurt her ankle recently. She blew out her Achilles.

And she said the doctor immediately tried to prescribe Oxycontin for her. She's like, get the fuck out of here. Yeah, she's like, I'm not taking that shit. No. And, you know, it happens, man. Doctors just try to shove pills down your throat. It's a real common thing. And if you have any sort of serious injury and they put you on that stuff,

one of the things they put Tom Petty on was fentanyl. And fentanyl is that shit that's fucking killing everybody it's with meth right fentanyl meth are very similar no heroin it's it's a extreme heroin yeah it's an extremely potent opiate yeah it's it's much more much more potent than heroin i think many many hundreds of times more potent yeah and so they give these people fentanyl patches, and then they're taking Oxycontins, too, and who knows what else they're taking. I mean, I feel terrible for someone who has bad pain, like, you know, from a broken hip or something like that. But Jesus Christ, take the pain rather than death.

Seriously. You know, like, this shit, you could take CBD. You could take CBD. It doesn't even have a psychoactive effect and has radical pain reducing properties to it. Yeah. And I don't do drugs, but the fact that people are so actively prescribing these heavy, really heavy, hard drugs to patients. They kill people. Kill people.

And weed is still illegal. And I don't smoke weed. So I'm not even like for myself, but just for other people. Well, I've never found weed to be a pain reliever. Really? I've heard a lot of people say that. I know. A lot of people do say that.

It's just maybe, I don't know. I'm one of those people that if you're in pain, just be in pain. Just like, yeah, it sucks. Just relax. You know? I mean, I remember one time though, I got my knee operated on. I had a ACL reconstruction and they gave me one of those buttons in the hospital where you press it and you get morphine. And it was when they had my leg on this motion machine, right?

So right after surgery, they're trying to get your blood moving. And so there's a couple screws in there, and they'd taken my patella tendon and cut it and put it inside and drilled it all in place and everything. And then I'm sitting there, it's this thing's just, it's just throbbing pain. And they give me this little button. I'm like, clack, clack, clack. But I'm like, I'm in the hospital. I'm not going to overdose. But, uh, I remember thinking, wow, this could be really fucking dangerous. If you had this in life, like it was like a little button on your hip, you can just press it and you get a dose of morphine, but it was a wonderful feeling. I've only done it once while I was in the hospital.

I got it for that brief moment. I was like, wow, this is an amazing feeling. I feel like you're floating through a cloud of love and just flying through the air. I went from being in exacerbating pain to... So how do you feel then? So we got in this discussion, we were talking about CTE.

So now, like, okay, I think MMA is a terrible career path, and people ask me all the time. As a professional undefeated MMA fighter. Don't do it. It's fucking terrible. Champion in two different organizations. For like a couple people, it's probably the right career path. For a majority of people, probably not a great career path. But so, you know, how do you feel about it when you think that, I mean, you're obviously saying, and I'm on the fence, but you're saying I think a lot of these people are getting CTE, clearly.

They are. How do you feel about, you know, being involved with it? Because that's like, in my future, I could probably coach them MMA, but I struggle with it because it's like, well, should I really recommend this person do MMA or should I not? Because are they going to end up fucked up and not be able to take care of their kids or where? I don't think you should ever recommend MMA to anybody. Okay, good. I usually don't. Yeah, I don't think anybody should recommend MMA.

But I think some people, it's their destiny. Yeah. There's a few people out there that they want to. Look, I don't think you should recommend skydiving to anybody either, though. Can you make a career out of that? I mean, my friend Andy Stump is a world record holder in that squirrel flying suit. Oh, that's just death. He's a maniac.

Did you ever read – there was that book called something, Chasing Superman, or – do you remember what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. It was about people like him and how it almost always ends up very poorly because you need this bigger rush and this bigger rush and this bigger rush. It was talking about big wave surfers and the flying suit and all this. It was talking about the psychology behind it and how it ends up poorly very, very, very often because these people need bigger rushes and more challenges and then they end up fucking themselves up. It only makes sense. Yeah. I would never encourage anyone to do that.

But for him, I mean, he's a retired Navy SEAL and this is just another level of psychotic shit that he can do to fill his time with. But he's got a bunch of sponsors and he actually makes a living doing that. I would never recommend that to anybody. I wouldn't recommend skiing. Sure. I don't think, you know, my kids like skiing. I don't even like skiing. I go skiing with them. Every time I ski. Can you get hurt skiing? No, I've never gotten skiing. Sure. I don't think, you know, my kids like skiing. I don't even like skiing.

I go skiing with them. Every time I ski, I'm like, this is fucked. Can you get hurt skiing? No, I've never gotten hurt. Okay. But I'm like, fuck that. Every time I'm skiing, though, I'm like, don't get hurt, don't get hurt, don't get hurt. Ooh, I didn't get hurt.

Don't get hurt, don't get hurt. All I think is Sonny Bono. Swat. Oh, jeez. Who else? One of the Kennedys hit a tree, right? Then maybe that could have been a false flag. No.

Could have been, right? Someone pushed him into the tree. Yeah, they fucking took his ski out with a sniper rifle right when he got too close to the woods. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of very, very dangerous careers. Sure. And I think if you feel compelled to do that, no one should be talking you into that. But I don't think anybody should stop you. I like the fact that boxing exists. I would never want to tell

Vasyl Lomachenko, don't fight. I would never want to tell him, don't fight. I want to see him fight. What if it gets proven without a shadow of a doubt that these things cause CTE? Do you think the government is going to ban them? No, I don't think they can.

How are they going to ban BMX? The I don't think they can. Really? How could they ban? Are they going to ban BMX? The government likes banning everything. They really do. They like banning things that cost them money or that cost people who donate to them money. Fair enough. The banning of the drugs is really tied to pharmaceutical drugs more than anything. You're right.

They're not banning it because they're trying to save us. They're banning it because someone's putting pressure on them to ban it. Or had put it in the past and they're not. Nobody's banning skateboarding. No one's trying to ban BMX riding. Those guys get fucked up. I mean, I was watching this video the other day of those guys doing the ramp with the skateboard

and the guy got to the top of the ramp and didn't catch it right and fell like a hundred feet. Oh, it's awful. Oh, Jesus Christ. I mean, they get beat the fuck up. But that's another one where that damn book, Chasing Superman or mean, they get beat the fuck up. But that's another one where, that damn book. Chasing Superman or Being Superman or something. Deafing Superman.

Decoding Superman. Decoding Superman? Is that what it's called? Decoding Superman? Yeah. Okay, so if you go back and watch the original X Games, when I was a kid, I don't remember what year it is. 90s at some point.

And, oh. The Rise of Superman. Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. This is a this is a freaking fantastic book I mean it's like it's so awesome

I'm obsessed with Sports Psych like I said I'm sure oh Steven Kotler yeah that guy's interesting yeah but so if you look at like

the original X Games stuff and then you go to like the X Games today oh yeah it's a different world it's totally different events so much more extreme because you

there it has to be this advance, advance, advance, advance, but then all of a sudden people are getting effed up. Yeah, you get to a certain point where you can only do so many flips in the air with your bike. Apparently, they haven't stopped trying to go more. They would do one rotation. Everybody would go, this is crazy. Then somebody comes wrong with two, and then now they're doing three.

Wasn't there the movie about Tony Hawk was like the first one to do the 720 or something? But now they go way more, don't they? Yeah. And they're going to be more every year. And if you watch any of those parkour kids that are jumping from building to building. And we've had one of them in here. What was his name? James.

Find it. I don't remember that one. I listen to mostly your political ones. I think some of the people you bring on are highly fascinating. Yeah, it's an interesting time. I get labeled alt-right all the time. I know, it's bizarre. Everybody's so quick to label people today.

It's such a strange time. Finger-pointing and putting people in boxes. They're doing it disingenuously. It's more divisive. A lot of these leftists, they want to say, well, I'm trying to make people less racist. But what they're really doing, they're being very divisive. I think you identify as libertarian. I identify more as a libertarian than Republican or Democrat. But yeah, a lot of people say I'm alt-right or love Trump so much.

And it's, well, I'm more libertarian than anything. I think less government, less invasion into our lives. But people want to put you into a little box because you don't agree with what they're saying. Yeah, it's a weird time for that. And that's what I think what you were saying about shaming. They try to shame you into being less racist or shame. But you're not doing that.

If you're pretending someone's racist when you know they're not, or if you're pretending that someone is a sexist or homophobic or whatever, when you know that you're just, people are, they're ignoring nuance. Yeah. And what, what they're really doing also is they're making, they're making people afraid to speak their minds. Right. And really how, if you and I had a disagreement on something, how we would come to a common

ground is by discussing it. I'd say, well, I think you're a reasonable person. What do you believe? And you'd say, well, I don't agree with that. And this is why. And eventually we would talk it out and maybe we still disagree, but we'd come to a common ground, right? But instead there's people on the one side, they're not saying that they're saying, what'd

you say? You're racist. You're sexist. You're homophobic. Name one, right? And then end a discussion. Then there's no discussion at all, right? Yeah, they're trying to win. Yeah, exactly. They're just trying to win.

They're trying to label you and then get the upper hand and win. Yeah, I think there's a real problem with people not being reasonable. And I think that you should be able to have conversations. Like, I've had people have criticized me, like even in person, like, why would you have that guy on your show which one any guy like uh milo yiannopoulos perfect example and i'm like well look what happened i mean we got to see how the guy thinks

i mean all all of his weird issues that came up and his book deal falling apart a lot of that had to do with conversations i had with him yeah it's like now you get a chance to see how the guy actually thinks and i don't think there's anything wrong with the way had with him. It's like, now you get a chance to see how the guy actually thinks. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way he thinks. I think he's a provocateur. I mean, it's not how I think, but I think that everybody has this perspective

on who he is that is exaggerated because of this public persona that he does to be outrageous. So I think that's a double-edged sword because I think Alex Jones does it as well. Alex is way crazier, though. Well, okay, but same idea, right? Yes.

Part of their persona— Is a show. Is a show. It's making it more extreme because they want to say that one thing that's totally effing crazy that'll catch a headline somewhere, right? And so they have these beliefs, but then they kind of go beyond them because it is a show. Yeah. And because they will make more money if they get more followers or more people clicking

on the articles or their videos or whatever. So I think it is. But then, you know, you go to someone like the Brett Weinstein guy. I think he's fascinating. Yeah. People calling him a racist. Crazy. And, you know, he was strong liberal.

Well, he's as progressive as it gets. He's as far from a racist as you could ever get. Yeah, there's this need to label people. Well, Alex is a showman in a lot of ways. But also, he says some things that are pretty fucked up, like the Sandy Hook stuff. Saying that Sandy Hook was a... He's looking for conspiracies everywhere. Everywhere.

He finds them some places. So sometimes he's right. Exactly. Sometimes he's right. Yeah, but the problem with looking for conspiracies everywhere is you're going to make people feel terrible. Yes. There was an article that I read about a guy who was a conspiracy theorist until his son was killed in Sandy Hook. What?

And then people were telling him that his son wasn't killed and that he's some sort of a government actor. And this guy was devastated. Yeah. You know, of course, the people that are really the nutty conspiracy theorists, oh, he's fucking undercover still. He's still undercover. You know, there's people out there that look for conspiracies in everything.

And it becomes a real problem because it muddies up the water. But I think at the same time, at least for me, and I think we have similar thought processes, you can't just take what mainstream media tells you and say, well, I guess that's how it happened. No, you can in some situations. But in Sandy Hook, you have dead kids, you have people grieving,

you have bodies, autopsy reports. It happened. You have a guy who had guns. You have people grieving. You have bodies. Autopsy reports. It happened. You have a guy who had guns. You had a mentally ill person who had access to these guns. But then if you take that same thought process on, say, Steven Paddock and the Las Vegas shooting, well, we still don't know how that turned out. Right. The Las

Vegas shooting is complicated because we know one guy did do that. But we think there was other people involved. They think there was other people involved. They think there was other people involved. And he might have gotten help from people, whether it's willingly or unwillingly, or wittingly or unwittingly. But I don't think there was other people shooting.

I don't think they've said that. So I don't know, right? And that's what a lot of these conspiracies, you have to understand that you're never really going to know the real truth, right? You have to keep an open mind. And you say, okay, well, this person says this. What does this person say? What does this person say? Do these things check out with each other? And it's like, how many different times have they changed

the Las Vegas shootings timeline, right? And then it was kind of weird that it went way out of mainstream media. Like, all of a sudden you heard about it for a week, and then you didn't hear about it again. I think that's a sign of the times. I think the news cycle today is about 10 hours. Yeah.

But you would think that people would want answers on it. I mean, that's the largest mass shooting in United States history. You'd think we'd want some more clear answers on what really happened and how it happened and why it happened. And we never really got those. And I know there's been a few new articles on it recently. And so maybe we're going to find out more information. And it's an incredibly confusing story because the guy was clearly a psycho clearly fucked up Yeah, and clearly planned this out for a long time. I mean he he got hotel rooms Overlooking music festivals in other places. Yeah, and like was planning out how to do this for a long time

He had a note in his in his hotel room that had all the ballistics calculations. So he knew like bullet drop from X amount of yards. And he was calculating how to kill all these people. He was on some weird antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, which does all kinds of weird shit to your head. There's a guy that was prone to fits of rage. He was a calculated professional gambler. There's a lot of weird stuff with this guy. The fact that he accumulated these weapons over years and maybe did it knowing that he was going to do this.

So you don't, there's a, whenever there's a mass shooting or anything that's crazy, you have two things happen. One, everybody wants answers. And two, everybody forgets about it really quick because some new shit happens in the news. And if it wasn't your family that got shot, it wasn't someone that you were close to that got shot, I know people that got shot there. I know people that, I met them.

I met people in Vegas that got shot there. I talked to them after it was over. It was complete and total chaos. And when there's complete and total chaos, you get all sorts of conflicting reports. People were running into other casinos saying that there's a shooter because they ran out of that area. And so then people were calling in police reports.

There's a shooter in Monte Carlo. There's a shooter in this. And so those things get reported as fact when many times it's part of the confusion of a chaotic mass shooting like that Vegas event. I don't know what happened other than the fact that this one guy definitely killed a bunch of people. But whether or not someone was helping him or whether or not there was other people involved, I think they're still investigating. Yeah. But so I guess my greater point there would be that if you're an intelligent individual,

you can't just take what CBS tells you to be complete fact, right? You go do some investigation yourself. You try to read from different sources. And then, hey, Sandy Hook, I think there's like a 99.9999999% chance that Sandy Hook was real, right? Is there some crazy, you know, infinitesimally small chance that it didn't happen? Sure, right? I don't think there is. I think it's very unlikely.

And then so Vegas, right? I think there's a 0% chance that Sandy Hook didn't happen. 0%. I've looked into it pretty... You know, it's just sad to me. And you're a dad. You know, the idea of your kid going to school and the school getting shot up by some psychopath.

Imagine if someone was saying that that was fake. After your kid's dead. You'd be frustrated, infuriated. You wouldn't even know where to turn. And that's actually happening to these people. And they're getting labeled as frauds. And people are emailing them and saying, how could you do this? You're defrauding the American people.

You're a part of the Illuminati. Yeah, so I think there's obviously those people who are on the one side of it. So if you go a spectrum for me, right? There's the American who's drinking Diet Coke and eating frozen pizza and listening to whatever CBS says. And then on the total opposite side of the spectrum, there's the group that thinks every single thing that ever happens in America is a planned conspiracy by the New World Order. So those are our two ends of the spectrum. Now we can fall anywhere in the middle there. new world order.

Right. So those are our two ends of the spectrum. Right. Now we can fall anywhere in the middle there. But I, so I think as a intelligent individual, we look at situations independently and say, well, there's some sketchy things there, not sketchy things there. That's probably true. Right. And kind of independently think about stuff by ourselves.

And that's, that's how I do it. And so, you know. That's a wise way to approach it. And I think CBS or NBC or name your news source, they're run by people and if they weren't there, they only have access to a certain amount of information and sometimes they get bad information and sometimes they don't necessarily know. I don't know how much of it is a part of some grand conspiracy

rather than how much of it is a part of the chaos of these moments, the lack of information and people drawing conclusions and then also witnesses on the scene when people are on the scene of something that's crazy they give all sorts of weird recounts and they're just they're filled with adrenaline they don't know how to handle the situation people you know

people don't handle chaotic events very well I don't think the earth's flat if that's fair what do you possibly believe in that might be crazy Yeah. But. I don't think the earth's flat, if that's fair. Oh, good for you. Yeah. What do you possibly believe in that might be crazy? Can I take a piss and I'll tell you? I've been holding it so long.

I'm going to run fast. Go ahead. No worries, man. I wonder if there's something wrong with my bladder. You can hold it? Yeah. Do you think I've trained it? Yeah.

I mean, sure. That guy is going to try to shoot himself to see the flat Earth in a couple days. Oh, the guy's shooting himself up into the space? Yeah. Dumb fuck. March 2nd. James Kingston was that guy, by the way. James Kingston. Thank you.

Sorry, James. Yeah. It's Dunbar. There he is. Dunbar's number, brother. You can only keep 150 people in your brain at any time. Look at that fucking picture. We're looking at a picture for the audio, audio folks of James Kingston on the top of this tower

and I don't know how many fucking stories he's up there, but it's insane because below him, and I mean way below him, are skyscrapers. That's probably like Dubai or something, right? Do you think that Dunbar's number could apply to other things besides people like websites or

numbers of instructions? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. You know, I think it applies to too many things. It applies, I just think for names, names and people, I'm struggling. I think I'm getting, like I have an overflowing pot. Like Shane Burgos and Calvin Cater were fighting this weekend

and I called Calvin Cater Chris Cater after he won, even though I'm a fan of his. He won, and I went, Chris Cater! And then I went, his fucking name's Calvin, you dumb cunt. I think I'm running out of space in my head for names, so my apologies to Calvin Cater. I'm running out of names. We're talking about Dunbar's number,

how you can only keep so many people in your brain. Okay. My brain's overflowed. I don't have any hard drive space left. I didn't know. So I thought it was, is that the guy that says you can only keep track of 150 people? Yeah. Like what's going on in the relationships and that kind of stuff?

You only have so much room in your hard drive space. Yeah. It's based on tribal societies. Our brains are sort of designed to keep track of 150 people. That's how we evolved. And then over the last, you know, X amount of hundreds of years.

Now all of a sudden you have to keep track of many, many multiples of that. Especially if you're someone like you or I, that runs into so many people who you, you, you meet on a regular basis. You got to keep those people all in your brain. But is it, is it, so I guess I haven't read that much.

Is it that you have to just know their names and faces or is it that you have to know like what's going on in their life? I think you're supposed to be able to track them, like have some sort of a, whether it's intimate or personal relationship with these people, know them. Yeah. So it's like there's only some,

like especially if you think about commentating on fights, I have to pay attention to these guys and what they're doing and their career. And there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. What is it, 500 fighters now? Yeah, 500 fighters that's active. And then how many of them get,

new guys come in, old guys go away. I still keep them all in my head. Hey, what's Sean Shirk up to these days? You know, they're all still in the head. Yeah. And it's like there's only so much room. And after a while, you wonder. You're like, wow, where are all these people going?

Yeah. I found that obviously with – and it's sad. Like, you know, college friends. It's like – you know, and it's good because you see them and it's like no time has passed. Right? But it's like if I knew if I was living two minutes away, we'd probably be best friends still. But now, I get to see you once a year, twice a year maybe. I can't

keep up with you. It's, dude, super challenging. I totally agree. And now, Max and I run the Wrestling Academies. My brother, we have three in Wisconsin. And it's like, this fall was my first where I full-time worked at one. And so now, I'm really immersed in the one academy, whereas I was kind of loosely keeping

track of all three. But now that I'm kind of totally immersed in the one, I find it a lot harder to keep track of what's going on at the other two, where I was kind of bedridden before when I wasn't so immersed in one. Yeah, I can only imagine. Eddie Bravo has a hundred schools. That's crazy, right? There's a hundred 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu's worldwide.

He can't keep track of all of them, can he? I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to ask him. I know he travels to all of them. He travels.

He's constantly traveling. How can he travel to all of them? Travels constantly. He's doing seminars at all of them. Oh my gosh. He's always traveling. Yeah.

So does he do like one time a year for each facility or something? I don't know. It's a good question. He goes to Columbia. He's going to... I mean,

it probably wouldn't even be once a year. Yeah, he's actually got one in Singapore now. Yeah's a good question. He goes to Columbia. It probably wouldn't even be once a year. He's actually got one in Singapore now. Yeah, he's everywhere. He was out in Singapore when I was there for one of my fights this year. It was maybe the May fight, I think. He was out there doing his 10th Planet seminar

and now they have a 10th Planet program at Evolve. It's crazy. Evolve is supposed to be an amazing facility. I've heard great things. I mean, the nicest MMA facility I've ever been to. They actually just opened their fourth location just in Singapore, which Singapore is a

city-state, right? It's 6 million people on a really, really small island. But some of their academies are only a mile or two apart. They're not far apart, but the population density is such that... listen, they start classes, I think, at 6 a.m. And they end classes at 11 p.m. And you can freaking stop in any time of day.

And there will be a class there that's full with Muay Thai or jiu-jitsu, whatever. You name it, it'll be going on. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, Manhattan is kind of like that in a lot of ways, right? Manhattan is... How many jujitsu schools are in Manhattan? I mean, obviously, Marcel.

Yeah, there's hundreds. But really big ones. Henzo's got a huge one. Marcel's got a huge one. Yeah. So, yeah, there's a lot right there. I mean, Henzo's is huge. That place is enormous.

Hundreds and hundreds of students. I thought they... No, I thought it was thousands. Could be. That's what someone told me. Henzo has over a thousand students in the main New York City location. And I think it ain't cheap because you've got to pay for rent. And so they're probably paying a couple hundred bucks a month.

Yeah. So Evolve is, I think, $350 a month. Wow. But obviously, so Singapore is one of the most wealthy countries on the planet. $350 a month. Wow. But obviously, so Singapore is one of the most wealthy countries on the planet. So you have to take that into account.

Pretty much everyone that lives there has a decent amount of wealth. And, you know, they spend it differently. Singapore is a fascinating country. I was there 15 times or whatever. So I got kind of immersed in the culture. And then I ended up reading the books about Lee Kuan Yew, the guy who started the country. And so, you know, there was a whole bunch of those Asian countries that got independence in the 1950s and 60s. And Singapore, I believe, was founded in 1965. It could be off by one year there maybe.

But, you know, a lot of those countries are not doing super well economically. And Singapore is like this freaking standout country who's like top five world per person wealth. And why? Why are they doing so much better? And so this is me from an outsider's perspective. So they really do a lot of kind of – it's kind of like self-tracking, right? And so every month a bunch of your check comes out to – you know, like we would pay taxes, right? A bunch of money comes out of the check.

So they can spend – this is fascinating. They spend their money on three things. It we would pay taxes, right? A bunch of money comes out of the check. So they can spend it. This is fascinating. They spend their money on three things. It goes into this fund, right? Education, healthcare, and housing, okay? And so if you want cheaper of any one of those, if you want the cheapest form of it, right, it's very government subsidized,

and it comes out of your fund, right? So only a little bit of money comes out. If you want the nicest healthcare or the nicest housing, then it's only a tiny percent government subsidized, right? So the more expensive the stuff gets, whether it's education or housing or healthcare, the less subsidized it gets,

and the cheaper it gets, the more subsidized it gets. And so everyone kind of, you know, they pay into this fund, so everyone has this personal fund that they can use, and then into those three things. And so I think a lot of people have – I think they feel like they have more control over their lives. And obviously it is very strict regulations and laws. But from what I've seen, and I've spent a lot of time there, everyone seems pretty happy. That's interesting.

Yeah. That's an interesting way to – I mean, I don't think there's any one good way to government – to govern people. Yeah. That's an interesting way to go. I mean, I don't think there's any one good way to government, to govern people. Yeah. And I think we have a pretty good system over here, but it's obviously filled with bureaucratic bullshit and red tape. Too much, yes.

Way too much government. Way too much. There's way too many people doing stupid jobs. And there's, it's just. And getting paid too much for doing them. And I mean, it's, and, and then the shit like, you know, trying to chase down medical marijuana in 2017, trying to stop legal marijuana. Yeah. And like, why? Like, who's paying you to do this? Like, why are you, why are you doing that? That doesn't make any sense. trying to chase down medical marijuana in 2017, trying to stop legal marijuana.

Why? Who's paying you to do this? Why are you doing that? That doesn't make any sense. This is not what our tax dollars should be going towards. You know what's funny? When you go all the way back, I think about it. So we talk about that process of who's keeping them from doing this,

and you talk about the pharmaceuticals with weed, which I think is true. You know what? A funny one I think about is John McCain and mixed martial arts. Because who is sponsoring John McCain? Budweiser. Budweiser, who was like the main advertiser for boxing. It's like, you cannot make an argument that boxing is safer than MMA.

You can't freaking do it. Like, it's impossible. It's impossible. But John McCain's over here getting paid by Budweiser and saying, MMA is awful, let's ban it. And at the same time, he's promoting boxing, essentially. It's freaking mind-blowing. Well, in his defense, it was MMA from a long time ago.

And it wasn't really the same as MMA now. And he's turned the corner. And now he supports MMA. But also, you've got Budweiser and Bud Light are sponsors now of MMA. But that's a real problem with politicians. They're dirty. There's so many dirty politicians. I don't know what percentage is, but it's high.

97. It's probably, it's probably a fucking high. You know, what crazy shit that, what crazy conspiracy do you believe in? So the one that got me started really like independently think myself was 9-11, which I think that was, that was for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. What, what do you think about 9-11, which I think that was for a lot of people. Yeah. What do you think about 9-11? I know I don't know all the answers, but I know

the given explanation, I don't believe. What given explanation? The one that came, what's the damn report that they wrote? The NIST report? No, that wasn't what it was, was it? Yeah, well, NIST is the one who did the report on Tower 7 collapsing.

Now, what was the other report they came out with right away? Anyway, so my buddy lived right by the airport, and he played loose change for me. And I said, you are out of your GD mind. Like, you are insane, man. Right. And then I started thinking, well, that doesn't, maybe? Maybe I should think about it, you know? That it was an inside job?

Not totally. I mean, so I think obviously the planes flew into the buildings for sure. I think there's no doubt about that. But that maybe there was inklings, inclinations that was going to happen and that not enough was done to stop it. I think this is one, this is another thing where you have a gigantic tragedy. And because of a gigantic tragedy, there's a lot of people that draw these conclusions based on witness testimony and things that are happening. But I think you have to realize that any time there's something that happens,

people start looking for all these different correlating factors, right? You start saying, well, hey, look, there was this local test that were being done. There was, they were looking out for planes that were potentially going to fly into buildings. They knew this was going to happen in advance. But if you talk to anybody that is in intelligence, they're dealing with that shit every day. Just one day, something happens. There's always warnings about terrorist attacks. There's always warnings about things happening.

And a lot of times, these warnings get thwarted. Like the FBI stopped that. Last week, there was one. There was one in San Francisco, right? Yeah. They had bombs and they stopped them with security. Yeah. And this has happened many times.

Now, when they don't catch it and it goes through, then people start thinking, oh, there was some sort of a conspiracy. They allowed these planes to fly into buildings. A missile hit the Pentagon. And people look for- There was a video that came out of that last week, but it might have been fake news. The Pentagon thing? There was a video of something hitting the Pentagon, which looked like a missile and

not an airplane. Really? But I don't believe it was, you know, I was like, this is interesting because I've never seen this video before and obviously there's no video evidence of what hit the Pentagon. Well, there's a video of something. I know there was one hidden camera thing or a security camera video that was released,

but what they did have is all sorts of pieces of aircraft all over the fucking lawn. I mean, in a blown up building and a plane that's missing and all the people dead. Like, I'm going to guess it was a plane. Yeah. You know, I just I think people look for conspiracies in everything because it's exciting. Well, I mean, stimulating about it. There is.

But then obviously, I know that you don't believe that everything we're told is the truth right away, right? I mean, if we go to something like Gulf of Tonkin incident, right? I mean, that's been proven to be false. Or the fact like the Banana Republics, right, where Dole asked us to go take out one of their dictators because they were going to nationalize all the banana plants in that country. I mean, those things have been now proven to be totally factual that the United States government went and did that country. I mean, those things have been now proven to be totally factual that the United States government went and did that stuff. So the fact that, and you know, in 1960s or 70s, those things were reported the opposite, right? So we can't obviously take everything that we've been reported as truth. Well, there's definitely been conspiracies that have been put together

and executed. And these conspiracies have greatly affected the American people. The Gulf of Tonkin is a perfect example. Another one that they were planning on was Operation Northwoods. Operation Northwoods was one that they were planning on blowing up a drone jetliner and blaming it on the Cubans. They were going to arm Cuban friendlies and have them attack Guantanamo Bay. They were going to sacrifice American troops and American lives. And they were going to do this in and American lives, and they were going to

do this in order to get people to be excited about a war with Cuba. This was a real thing that was signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was released by the Freedom of Information Act, and it was vetoed by Kennedy. So we know that there were people, at least in 1962, that were planning on shit like this. Yeah. So that's a real thing. And the idea that that just went away and no one does that anymore. That's crazy. I the idea that that just went away and no one does that anymore. That's crazy.

I don't believe that. I think there's most certainly evil people in all fucking sectors of life. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So it's good to have an open mind, but there's also a lot of fucking conspiracy loons that look for- And they get consumed with it. That's the issue. They get consumed with nothing that I've been told is true. Which is obviously

one far end of the spectrum. Anyone who's that end is crazy also. There's people out there that think the satellites are fake. And they think that dinosaurs are not real. And that the Earth is flat is the one I just shake my head like. The moon landing one is my favorite. Really? I got balls deep in that

for years. I was completely convinced. So you think they did not go to the moon? No, I don't think that anymore. Okay. You know what I think now? I think I don't know. Okay. But I do think that it is one of the more fascinating conspiracies that between 1969 and 1972, they had seven attempts, six of them successful.

Apollo 13 was the one that they didn't apparently make it, and they had to come back. But that was the only time in history that a human being has been more than 400 miles above the Earth's surface. All the space station missions, all the space shuttle missions, all that stuff is- Within orbit. Yeah, it's low. It's all very low. They went 260,000 miles out and back into deep space, but they had never even flown a chicken out there and see if it comes back alive. Like, we really didn't.

Yeah, no. I'm not into the space travel one. I mean, they did a couple of flybys that went around the moon early before they landed on the moon. Yeah. But other than that, I mean, without unmanned drones like what we have on Mars and things like that, we've never really sent a living thing out through the magnetosphere, through the Van Allen radiation belts, into deep space. There's all these possibilities of solar flares

and anything that would have killed them instantly, and they just did that. And then we haven't been able to do that since 1972. That's the one way. I've never looked into the moon landing. I think it's kind of goofy, right? Well, it's weird. It's a weird one.

Why have we never gone back? Surely our technology is far superior to what's kind of goofy, right? Well, it's weird. It's a weird one. Why have we never gone back? It's been 50... Surely our technology is far superior to what it was in 1969, right? The technology is far superior, except that they're not using that technology for manned space travel into deep space like that and to go into the moon. So it's like our technology in all these other areas is superior, but they haven't really worked towards that because they haven't been funded. So the big issue is in many ways it's money, right? How much money is there in going to the moon? And it's also very risky to send humans out there.

We're talking about manned missions to Mars now, which may or may not take place by 2030. They're talking about doing that. But it's way cheaper and safer to send robots out there. Why risk human lives? It's very retro. The moon, right? And they put robots on Mars. Yeah.

The rovers. The rovers on Mars are the most interesting because they're sending these really high-resolution photos of the surface of Mars. And they're running tests and checking for biological life. It's really, really interesting stuff. But between 69 and 72, when they did all this stuff, I mean, there's the technology back then was nothing compared to what they have now in terms of calculations and computers. And it's also, there's unquestionably some stuff that, whether it was images or video, that was faked. Really?

Yeah. So, like I said, I've never looked into this at all. Gemini 15 is the big one because there's a photo of Michael Collins. It shows him in deep space, and they use it as a press release saying that he was on a spacewalk. When it was really an image of him from a test run where there was all this stuff in the background and he was on this harness and they just blacked out the background and tried to sell it as him being

in space. See if you can find that. Michael Collins, what do you... I was looking up how much it costs to send somebody to space. Oh, it's insane. 70 million dollars. 70 million? For a NASA astronaut to fly on a Russian shuttle. There's all these private guys trying to sell tickets to places. $70 million? For a NASA astronaut to fly on a Russian shuttle. Called Jeff Bezos. Private guys trying to sell tickets to places.

I mean, Bezos is trying to do it. Musk, obviously. But that's space. That's just low Earth orbit. That's still inside 400 miles. None of them are trying to go anywhere? No. Well, they might in the future.

Or Branson. Well, that's all the same thing. It's all low Earth orbit. But they are talking about future visits to the moon and to Mars. But a lot of times I feel like when they say that, you know, George Bush Sr. said that they were going to go back to the moon again. In like fucking, when was that? 1990 or whatever the hell that was? People have always said we're going to go back to the moon. But we haven't been back since 1972.

Does that mean that we never went? No. But then it gets weird when you find out that Wernher von Braun was a fucking Nazi. Who? Wernher von Braun, the guy who, he was the head of NASA. He was the guy who organized the moon landings and he was the head rocket guy. He was, that guy was a legit Nazi. Like he was wanted by the, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that if he was alive today, they

would prosecute him for crimes against humanity. They would hang the five slowest workers every day in front of his Berlin rocket factory. Oh, yeah. No, 100%. I mean, that's what they did. What they did was they took this thing, it was called Operation Paperclip,

where when we won World War II, they took all the top Nazi scientists and they secretly brought them over to America. And they did it on the down low so that no one would think like, hey, why do we have a guy named Werner Von Braun running the American space program? It's because the Nazi scientists were insanely advanced. So the question is like, well, were they really Nazis or were they scientists that were under the boot of the Nazi administration?

I mean, well, I don't know. I mean, I'm not around that. But I do know that these are the people that were the head engineers and the people that designed it. Wernher von Braun himself was saying how impossible it was just years before they did the moon landing and years before Operation Paperclip, that it was just years before they did the moon landing and years before operation paperclip that it was impossible to go to the moon or how ridiculously impossible it would be but technology advanced from then to when 1969 happened to when they did it i stopped saying that

we never went to the moon because i really don't know what the fuck i'm talking about and that's that's a big part of understanding these conspiracies it's hard you have to well you have to really know. How much do I know about rocketry? How much do I know about aerospace? Zero. Yeah. So if I'm running around saying I don't believe people went to the moon, what is it based on?

It's based mostly on ignorance, speculation, and the excited feeling that comes with trying to uncover a conspiracy. Sure. But I think you do have to be a little bit discerning on what you hear. But it is frustrating. And that's where a lot of these conspiracy guys, they think they know more than they do because you have to come to the realization that you're probably never going to know the real answer with a lot of these things. Very likely. I mean, some of them come out many, many, many, many years later.

We're talking about like Gulf of Tonkin, right? Or Operation Northwood. Many years later, it comes out. But you know, there's a good likelihood that I'll never know the truth on stuff I read a lot about. I think with the moon landing, it's way more likely that we went to the moon, but that some of the footage is fake. And I think they probably did that

because it's incredibly difficult to film things on the moon. And I think they filmed some stuff in test runs and then tried to pass that stuff off. They should have brought their iPhone. They didn't have it back then. They had these cameras that they had in the center of their chest. Or they would have been taking a selfie on the moon, Snapchatting it.

You'd have to take your suit off, and then you would die. Yeah, they didn't have a camera that you could put in front of you. Well, maybe they had one of those clicker buttons they could have with their big gloves on. You know, they put the thing out and then they click it and then boom, Snapchat, Wi-Fi on the moon. Well, that's what they said. Well, it was that they did it remotely. That's how they captured the video of the lunar module leaving the surface of the moon and panned up and watched it go.

They did all that remotely. It's all – there's some squirrely footage. You ever see the video of them jumping around it looks like they're on trampoline. Yeah, I see that Like they're just bouncing straight up in the air You're like what the fuck is that how come the physics are different in different flights like in some some of the flights like Apollo 11 They're barely getting off the ground one where they're like they're walking, but they're kind of Yeah, like that well. There's ones like that, and then there's also ones where they fall down it looks like they're getting yanked up by wires i think it's entirely possible that some of that stuff was faked but i don't i think it's way more likely that they actually went to the moon than they didn't but it's way sexier to think

that they faked the whole thing it's fun it's fun to think they faked the whole thing that everybody was quiet about it. And Neil Armstrong gave this real cryptic speech on the 25th anniversary of the moon mission saying that there are hidden truths that... What is the exact quote that he said? Some great truths that could be revealed, removing some of truth's hidden layers.

So what if he was given it away? It was real cryptic. It was like, what are you... Let's see if you can find it. I got the video. Yeah, play the video. He might have been given it away. Well, if you were a conspiracy theory,

this would give you a rock-hard boner. Because listen to this. Neil Armstrong made a rare public appearance. Next generation of taxpayers. No, no, no. this would give you a rock-hard boner. Listen to this. No, no, no. Just play the whole thing so you don't confuse everybody. Today we have with us a group of students among America's best. To you we say we have only completed a beginning. We leave you much that is undone.

There are great ideas undiscovered. Breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers. What the fuck does that mean? I mean, what... You're supposed to say,

yo, I went to the moon, bitch. You're not supposed to say breakthroughs that could be... Maybe he's giving it away. Truth protective layers, I went to the moon, bitch. You're not supposed to say breakthroughs. Maybe he's giving it away. Truth protective layers. Like, I don't even understand what that means. The press conference is one of the more fascinating things. If you watch the press conference, again, I was balls deep in this stuff for years.

The press conference from 1969 when they returned from the moon is one of the most cryptic, weird things you'll ever see. These guys look like they just stole something and they're being questioned. I've never seen a video where people look like they're more full of shit than that video of the press conference from 1969. It's weird, man. It's weird. They're like fidgety and looking nervous like they're getting away with something. So they didn't do it then?

They might have done it. They might have been forced to say some things that they didn't want to say, and that could be part of it. Absolutely. They could have done it. But there's a lot of weirdness with the moon landing. If you wanted to have a conspiracy to wrap your head around that's exciting, it's one of the best ones. Really? But who benefits from it?

The United States government did because it showed military superiority over the Russians. We were able to do that. It also, you know, it was the Nixon administration. People were just flat out full of shit. Well, yeah. I mean, they were just lying to people left and right back then. That's government, though.

Yeah, but even more so then because it was unchecked. There was no media. Social media. Yeah, there's nothing that would expose them for this. And this stuff, they would air it on TV once in 1969. You never see it again unless you watch it on film. There's no YouTube where you can go back and watch the astronauts on trampolines video. That's my favorite one.

You watch that and you go, what in the fuck is happening there? These guys are bouncing up in the air. How are they doing that? If you watch Apollo 11 when they were moving around on the surface of the moon, it's just like they're moving in slow motion. And then you go to whatever it was, like Apollo 14 or 15, when they were doing the trampoline thing. They're just fucking flying through the air.

Have you seen it? I know. I had never gotten to the moon thing. The flight thing is ridiculous. Watch this. And their feet thing is ridiculous. Watch this. And like their feet are hidden. Look at this. Watch these guys bounce up in the air.

It's like they're on some sort of wire. Like they're being yanked up into the air. Oh, yeah. Like what the fuck are they doing? And they're playing. Like falling down. And it's very weird. But it could have been that they were really on the moon.

And these guys were fucking cowboys and yahoos and they wanted to bounce around oh you were so you were posting those videos back in the day

yeah I had a debate on Penn Jillette's radio show with a guy who's an astronomer and he wasn't willing to admit a lot of stuff that was a fact

like the fact that Wernher von Braun was a Nazi well why does the flag look so still there well the flag had a wire first of all on the top of it that stiffened it up to make it but there's there's videos of the flag moving in a non-existent breeze which is weird too and there's they try to make some logical explanations for why the flag could be moving in a vacuum and some of it makes sense, but some of it doesn't.

Like, the wires one is weird. If you watch them fall down, like, go to that one right there, Jamie. Like, if you watch, like, sometimes they're falling down, and when they're falling down, it looks like they get yanked back up. But I think it might not have been real footage. What they might have done is use some test footage, like right there, Jamie, right there. Let it go. Like homeboy falls down, and then it looks like he gets yanked back up.

Look at this. Oh, he did not. That is not him standing up. Yeah, what is this? That's not him standing up. You can't stand up like that. Right, but you're on the moon. No, no.

Okay, so you realize you're in one-sixth Earth's gravity. But there was nothing to make him go like this. Exactly. Right? You can't get up without. Exactly. Now we go back to MMA because that like this. Exactly. Right? You can't get up without. Exactly. Now we go back to MMA because that's what these freaking folk style wrestling is the next generation of MMA.

Yeah, watch this again. Because you have to turn to your base to get up. You can't look at, there's nothing on the ground. How's he going to get the momentum to go? He's getting yanked up. Like he would have super abs. He would have to be like a break dancer. No, you can't because.

Okay, maybe a break dancer. Maybe a break dancer. But you can't get up without putting a bass down, right? Yeah. Yeah, that was really weird. It's very weird. Watch it again. Watch him get yanked up.

Yeah, he's got no bass. Yeah. It almost seems like that little piece is played in reverse. Yeah. It almost does. Yeah. It almost does. Yeah, he couldn't stand up like that.

But the thing falls down right afterwards, so it wasn't in reverse. I think it's entirely possible that some of the footage was bullshit but it doesn't mean that they didn't go to the moon yeah it means that overzealous people in and he only had one foot on the ground there too right yeah oh that's true look at this watch so he stood up like that's ridiculous he can't do it what his right foot's down his left foot's up and he just goes straight up in the air it is crazy that's fake but i've never been in one six earth gravity in either of you no joe it's fake dude he just goes straight up in the air. It is crazy. That's fake. But I've never been in one-sixth Earth's gravity in either of you. No, Joe, it's fake, dude.

You can't stand up like that. I think that's fake. Ben Askren says we never went to the moon. I said that video is fake. No, the video is real. That's from television. Okay. The video, that guy standing up like that, he got help somehow. You can't stand up like that. Very well

he could have been on wires. It could have been that they were using that to simulate what it would be like. Because they definitely filmed a lot of simulations. They did a lot of that because they wanted to prepare the astronauts. It's entirely possible that some of those simulations got passed off as being an actual

video of them on the moon. Sure. Yeah. Fair enough. Or they faked the whole fucking thing. I wasn't there. I don't know. I was only two. I'm going to use that as a prelude. I think folk style wrestling is the next, that's the next genesis of MMA, right? We go, what's next?

Yeah. Like that guy standing up, people don't realize, if you watch the Lima Rory fight, it was incredibly frustrating to watch for me because Lima was literally just laying on his back in guard you know and guard is almost non-existent effective in MMA now well unless you're Brian Ortega okay there's a few guys tiny amount right but I think

those but those guys are like you like your wrestling is so highly effective in MMA some people can say you can't get by just with wrestling I don't just wrestle I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu. You're right. No doubt. But you use a lot of wrestling. Primarily. It's not that Brian Ortega

can box too. He can do a lot of other things too. He can strike. He's a good, solid striker. But his guard is so dangerous. It's just another level of dangerous as opposed to most MMA fighters, including Lima. People actually going back to their base, right, which has been, it's been a no-no forever in MMA.

You don't go back to your base because you expose your back. Right. But then again, you know, what percentage of guys who are sitting in guard actually get submissions from the guard now? The number's really small. Yeah, it's low. So you're going to have to find out now. Okay, like, this is so, so frustrating.

So in the Lima fight, Rory wins the first two rounds. It's competitive, but he wins pretty clearly. Right. But the leg kicks are still, I've never been kicked as hard by anyone as Douglas Lima. He kicked me one time in the leg. I freaking didn't walk right for a week. Really? Oh, my God, he kicked so hard.

He kicked so hard. So hard. And so third round, there's this accumulation of leg kicks, and all of a sudden Rory's leg is really effed up from getting kicked a handful of times. And he's doing that low calf kick. Yes. Well, he's kicking him kind of all over, but then you see Rory starting to do this one instead of checking it. So Lima starts taking control of the fight.

I think he wins the third round, in my opinion. Fourth round, in the beginning, he kicks him once. And Rory falls down, and he hops in the mountain, starts beating him up. He's like, holy crap, this fight might be over. And then, so Rory recovers. But then the fifth round, Rory goes out and shoots, like, a single leg, double leg, like, immediate. We're talking first 10 seconds, right? And going into that round, you think, shit, he might get finished this round.

I mean, he can barely walk. Look at his leg. Right. And so Lamega's taken down 10 get finished this round. I mean, he can barely walk. Look at his leg. Right. And so Lame gets taken down 10 seconds into the round. He literally stayed in guard for 4 minutes 50 seconds. And you're like, at some point, is he going to try to get up? Because he has to get up. If he gets up and he lands one or two more kicks without getting taken down,

the fight's likely over. Wow. You know? But he refuses to turn to his base because this is anti-jiu-jitsu. You shouldn't turn to your base in juiu-jitsu because you have your back. Well, he's worried about getting choked, yeah. Fuck it, Joe. At that point, you're losing.

Right. What else are you going to do? Well, he never tried to sweep him. He never tried to submit him off his back. He kind of tried butterfly sweeping a couple times. But so at this point, I mean, I thought it was two rounds, two rounds, right? Right. You're losing the fifth round.

Yeah. You got to try to get up to some point. So that was the round that did it for Rory. So he won 49-46 on two scorecards and 48-47 on one. So it was 3-1. So then even more reason to get up, right, if you're losing by that much. But, yeah, Lima refused to get up. So at that point I'm thinking, hey, maybe Lima thinks he won or something.

I don't know. But yeah, so a lot of Jiu-Jitsu people are struggling with this fact that in modern-day MMA, you're going to have to try to get up because guard is no longer that effective, and you just get punched in the face over and over and over again, and that's terrible. What are your feelings on going to half guard and going for an underhook on the same side? Try it, but it's not, you know, again, like as me as a, as a top guy, I would rather be in half guard than full guard. I'm going to land a lot of damage from half guard.

And then you're also, if you're in half guard, you're gonna be trying to work and you're gonna get yourself tired and you're very unlikely to sweep me. Right. So I think half guard is better than full guard. But I think, I think eventually where people are gonna have to get to is they're going to have to actually get up. You're going to have to get up, and putting your feet on someone's hips and kicking them

is no longer a great solution. It works every once in a while, but it's not like you can do that every single time. It just doesn't work. Yeah, it's pretty rare. Pretty rare. Everybody's so aware of it. Yeah, so bottom and top folk style wrestling, I think,

is the next genesis in MMA where people are really going to have to have a deep understanding because once you do get taken down, or once you get a takedown, and there's some, you know, Yol Romero was the perfect example. He never did folk style wrestling in America, right? He was a very, very elite freestyle wrestler, but he gets these takedowns and he can only stay on top for like 15 seconds. Right.

It's like you did all that work to get the guy on the ground and now you just let him back up. Like, what was the point? Right. What was the point of it? Well, he to get the guy on the ground, and now you just let him back up? What was the point? What was the point of it? Well, he smashes some guys on the ground, like Machida, when he got him down on the ground. Some of them, yeah. He put him away. He's a freak athlete, too.

It's hard to say, hey, do what he does, because no one's built like that guy. That guy has the weirdest body I've ever seen. Really? Why? Because he looks like he's 230 pounds, and he weighs 185 when he weighs in. Yeah. It's like, how the fuck is that 185? I always look at him. I'm like, I don't even understand it.

Like, where's the weight going? And you would think he's one of those guys that's on PDs by looking at him. But then when you look at him, like, he won a world title in 98, 99, somewhere in there. He looks the same at age 18 or 19. That's 40. Yeah, it's incredible. Because then you think like, well, if he is on PDs, it had to be prior to age 18 because he looks the same. Well, what are your thoughts on like Corellon?

Because you know that Corellon. PDs. Yeah, but they used to call him the experiment. Yeah. And his parents are tiny you know his parents are like 5'5 5'7

and then he's 6 foot whatever the fuck he is and a gorilla of a man yeah and I always wondered like one day in the future

whether it's 5 years from now or 30 years from now they're going to be genetically manipulated people crazy right well you watched Icarus I'm sure.

Oh, you had that guy on here. And that was fascinating. And that pretty much just, I mean... Cemented the Russian anti-doping program. Every single person. State-sponsored doping program for everybody. For everybody. Which is crazy. And it's like, you had the hint that they were

likely cheating, you know, but then as someone who competed against them, man, that's a tough pill to swallow. How does it make you feel? I mean, now it's like, well, shit, I guess I should have been one way or the other. But to know that you were a leg down and like going to MMA now, I knew everyone was cheating for sure. Right. So I'm going to fight him whether they're cheating or not. Well, like the pride days, it was essentially sanctioned. That was sanctioned. Like they would tell him like, hey, you know, in this contract, it says you can do steroids. Right. So I'm going to fight them whether they're cheating or not. Well, like the pride days, it was essentially sanctioned. That was sanctioned. Like they would tell them like, hey, you know, in this contract, it says you can do steroids, right?

How does 1FC handle that? So they don't do drug testing yet. Well, that's great. Yeah. I mean. That should be fine. I've been pushing them to do so, you know, in my time there. And their thing is that a lot of these countries, it's not prevalent in Indonesia or Manila or wherever.

Get the fuck out of here. Well, we'll find out. Just get the fuck out of here with that. That's my take. That's not my, yeah, that's not me saying that. That's me. That's Joe Rogan saying that. Get the fuck out of here with that.

So, but I know you've talked a couple times, I've heard you about their weigh-in program at 1FC. Yes. Which I think is fantastic, and I think every MMA organization should do it. The high-level ones. Could you explain it? Yeah, so it's really simple. You do hydration, and you do weight on the scale, same time.

So you can't cut water weight out, right? Right. So you piss hydrated, get on the scale, literally moments later, like you go in the bathroom, you piss. They test the specific gravity. You go get on the scale, right? So essentially, everyone moved up one weight class. Every one of their champions bumped up a weight class. So like over there I fight 185,

but you know, it's essentially welterweight. They even call it welterweight. Because it's the same thing, because I can't cut any water weight. So they adjusted it. So they adjusted it. So I was the welterweight champion, I was still the welterweight champion. They just moved the weight class. It's different. So

there's the day of the fight, the day before the fight, two days before the fight. If you make the two days before the fight, if you make both the weight and the hydration, you do not have to weight test or hydration test on the last day. You're clear. So if you make it both those days. Because there's not going to fluctuate in 24 hours. Listen, if you can figure out how to cheat that, I can't figure out how someone could possibly cheat that test. Because when they first instituted it, I said, well, how is someone going to cheat that, I can't figure out how someone could possibly cheat that test. No.

Because when they first instituted it, I said, well, how is someone going to cheat on this? Or how could someone cheat? You know, when it's like they watch you piss, you know, you can't have like a whiznader on or anything. Right. So I don't know how you would cheat. I don't think you can. I don't think you can. I don't think you can.

So, yeah, so it's fantastic because like fight week then, instead of making this, and so when I would fight 170, I would be 183 to 185 to start my water weight cut. I would cut the water weight to 170 or 171 depending on title or non-title. And then I would hydrate back up. So now I don't have to do that dehydration process. I'm literally the exact same size I was prior. And media obligations during the week are obviously a lot easier because I'm not worried about cutting my weight or I'm not feeling miserable or whatever. And it's a lot safer. And then so if someone misses, obviously they're fined,

the same as in America, if you miss what you're fined. If you miss hydration, so say, Joe, you're 185, and you weighed in 185, but you're dehydrated. You didn't really make it, right? Right. You have to get hydrated and make weight. So if you miss weight, so it's the last day you haven in 185, but you're dehydrated. You didn't really make it, right? Right. You have to get hydrated and make weight. So if you miss weight, so it's the last day you haven't made it, you have to keep drinking until you piss hydrated,

and then whatever you weigh there is what you weigh. What's the parameters when it comes to hydration or not hydration? It's the same scale you use. In America, at the beginning of the college wrestling season or high school, you have to do a specific gravity test. I might mess up a zero, but I think it's 1.025 is the specific gravity, which I know is the same they use for hydrated and not hydrated in wrestling in America. So anything under that, you're dehydrated? No, you're good.

So you want to be below. So 1.0000 is water. Oh, okay. So you want to be close to that, right? And so there is like you do have to just drink some water, right? If you drink a like, you do have to just, you have to drink some water, right? If you drink a whole bunch of water, you piss it out. You're perfectly hydrated. But if you know, there have been a couple of times like, so in the early days they did tests.

The first two days were actually just testing to see where you were at. The third day was the one that counted, you know? And so like if you ate a bunch of like meat or something, you might show up as dehydrated, even though that's what you walk around in every single day. So you just have to make sure you drink a lot of water so it's coming out nice and clear. That's an interesting way of doing it, and I think that's a great idea because I think that is one of the biggest problems in MMA today. Uriah Hall and Vitor Belfort got canceled last week because Uriah Hall was literally having seizures on his way to the weigh-in. Crazy, right?

It's fucking insane. It is. And I think it's one of the worst parts of MMA because I think MMA shouldn't be about who's slickest in being able to deceive the weight system. I mean, it should be your skill versus your opponent's skill. You're both the same size. Well, the whole point of it is, the whole point of a weigh-in is to fight someone our same size.

Yes. That's the whole point of it. Yes. And so why people would fight back against the system that 1FC is using is beyond me because listen, the most miserable part of my weight cut, I'm fine dieting. That's all good, right? But when you got to cut that last 12, 13, 14 pounds of water weight out, it's miserable. Everybody knows it's miserable, right?

And it affects your performance the next day. Yeah. I mean, so my thought process really affects them more than it affects me. Maybe that's just me being positive about it, right? And it affects your performance the next day. Yeah. I mean, so my thought process is it affects them more than it affects me. Maybe that's just me being positive about it, right? Right. Why is that? Because of your wrestling background? Because they're a pussy and I'm not.

Right? Or maybe it's just me psyching myself up. So my thought process on everything is anything that goes wrong will affect my opponent more than it will affect me. Oh, that's a good point. I am more stable. I can deal with shit that goes wrong. Most people, it affects them. And so maybe that's just me telling myself that,

but that makes me feel good about it. Well, a lot of people feel that way about weight cutting. They like weight cutting because they think that the other guy's not going to be able to handle it as well. Make him go through some adversity, and then the next day he's going to be troubled. Sure, exactly. But I think if you take that process away,

I think it makes media obligations a lot easier. It's healthier. It makes people a lot healthier. that process away, I think it makes media obligations a lot easier. It's healthier. It makes people a lot healthier. And, yeah, I mean, how many fights have you—just from a business standpoint, how many fights have we had canceled this year because of the weight thing? I mean, it's been quite a few. How much did it change your performance physically? How would you feel the next day? I think I felt—you know, honestly, for me, I know they said those studies that you don't really fully hydrate.

I believe it was 36 to 48 hours after. Man, I've always felt fine. So when I graduated college, the weight class in the United States for the Olympic stuff was 163. I would weigh roughly 175 on a day-to-day basis and then water cut down to 163.

And then when I was fighting at 170, I would be, say, between 183 and 185 and water cut down to 170. So my water weight cut was very, very similar every single time. And I was disciplined in that manner. I didn't want to be fluctuating. And so my goal was actually to get down to my target weight six weeks prior to competition, right? So I'm walking around 183 to 185 six weeks prior.

So I'm the same exact person every single day. Whereas I think the part that a lot of these people F up, and it's because they're not disciplined enough, is they try to descend while they're training, right? So, you know, maybe I get up to 195, which is, that's a small bump. Some of these guys are really undisciplined. They get way, way, way, way overweight, right? And so during that last six weeks, or even the last couple weeks, they're trying to bring that body weight down, right? And so in my mind, there's two ways to lose weight. You can diet and lose body weight, right? Fat, mass, whatever. And then there's the water weight where we're sweating and we're taking that out of us, right? Those are the two ways.

And so I think a lot of guys, and I don't know if you've ever cut weight, Joe, but I know, so for me, it was in college in the summers I'd get really fat, and then I'd bring my weight down in the fall, and you feel it. When you're losing more calories than you're taking in, it's like this weird feeling in your body, and you feel like shit all the time. So I think a lot of fighters are doing that really close to when they're fighting. So now the water weight cut makes you feel terrible, and now they're cutting everything out calorically also. And so that's like a double whammy.

That's what I think about it. There's another thing that benefits wrestlers and that wrestlers seem to take pride in being able to push through discomfort. Yes. And the more miserable you are, the more you just fucking bite down on your mouthpiece and deal with it. Because you get used to doing that all through camps, all through college and high school. You're always dehydrated. You're always losing weight. Well, I mean, college wrestling is not that... The weight cutting is not that bad anymore.

So they have the system, and people are starting... When did it change? 97, I think, a couple people died instead of changing it. And they institute the same thing as 1FC? That's sort of a hydration test? So it's once. You do it in the beginning of the season, find your minimum weight. But I think more than anything, what people are finding, it's a one-hour

weigh-in. So if your dual meet is at 1 o'clock, everybody weighs in at noon. So what people have found out is you can't cut weight. You wrestle like shit. The problem with fighting doing that, though, is brain injuries. So that's why I think 1FC is the best. But in college wrestling, you're talking about

the discomfort thing. Part of that is that, you know, when you go to a college wrestling program, again, it's very structured. You can't skip practice. You have to be there every single day, right, on time. And then it's like you have 40, you know, black belt, right, jiu-jitsu black belts. Not even just black belts, like world class, 19 to 23 in their physical prime, ready to fight each other every single day. 19 to 23 in their physical prime, ready to fight each other every single day. And so you get used to this grind, dealing with people, battling people, discomfort every single day. You know, and a lot of it's also dealing with injuries.

Like, you know, and Chael Sutton talks about it a lot that, hey, and I always talk to my guys about this. Listen, the national tournament for the NCAA is March 15th through 17th. And you cannot guarantee me you're going to be totally healthy on that date. You cannot guarantee me you're going to be totally healthy on that date. You cannot guarantee me you're going to be not sick on that date. You're going to have to compete March 15th through March 17th, no matter what, if you want to win a national title. And so wrestlers get used to this grind where you just don't see that in other sports.

Yeah, I think that aspect of wrestling is one of the biggest tools that they take into the octagon, the mental toughness and that ability to, I mean, the grind. Again, it's a badge of honor in wrestling to be able to handle the grind. It's not really in kickboxing or in Muay Thai or any other sport. Well, they're not really forced to. I mean, how many kickboxing or jiu-jitsu schools can you name where there's literally 40 black belts? I mean, it's been borne out through high school wrestling. You go to all these national tournaments and state tournaments.

You find out who the best are. The best of the best get recruited, and they go to these institutions to train with the other best of the best of the best. And then in addition to that, the post-collegiate guys who are trying to make the world teams and Olympic teams, they're sticking around training. guys who are trying to make the world teams and Olympic teams, they're sticking around training. So you have this like melting pot of freaking really great wrestlers that are training with each other every single day for five to, you know, plus five years if you're going to world championships, right?

Yeah. There also seems to be like a much more systematic approach to training people and a lot more drilling, you know, and a lot of jujitsu schools like, oh, show the arm bar from the guard. Here, we hook the arm okay I go under here my legs I make my leg I lift up okay you practice everybody get together it drives me insane

I'll go to jiu-jitsu classes sometimes and they'll literally go over two techniques you drill it twice and then the rest of the class is just people rolling five minutes five minute goes. Maybe. It drives me insane, Joe, because I come from this wrestling background. And then I also like sports psych and the study of high performance is like, that's what I love.

I love studying people who are the best in their field at whatever they do. And we know without a shadow of a doubt, just saying go for five minutes is not the most effective way to train someone. It does not happen. So in wrestling, there's a whole bunch of different – you could do – some days you might do matches. Some days you might do a 30-minute go. Some days you might do groups of three one-minute goes. Some days you might do situations. I start on the single leg.

I start on the high crotch. I start on front lock, right? And so there's all these different scenarios that we might try. I mean, if I'm coaching my academy, right, and we're working on – we drill front head locks, or we call it mantis position where you grab both armpits and bounce and go if we're drilling that we don't just say okay now go five minute goes because how many how many tries are they going to get it going in the mantis position that are the front headlock maybe one maybe two but essentially most people if you say go for five minutes they they they are not disciplined enough to make themselves do new skills they

revert to whatever they do best right and then just do it over and over and over and over again right and so if I want a kid to be good at a headlock, which if you're going to wrestle at a high level, you need a good for a headlock, period. Factual. You have to have it. I'm going to put him in there 50 times in that practice. He's going to get it over and over and over and

over. And maybe the next day it's single legs. And then maybe the next day it's double legs, right? And then maybe some days you say, hey, go for 10 minutes, go wrestle. Right. Right? Because you want to change it up a little bit. Yeah.

But saying go for five minutes every single day is very much not the most effective way to do it. And it's so insanely frustrating for me to have that happen at almost every jiu-jitsu school on the planet. Eddie Bravo's talked about this a lot. And one of the things that he says that jiu-jitsu is so fun to roll that people just want to get to the rolling part real quick. I don't care what they want. You're right. I like that. I don't freaking care, Joe. I want them. And my kids tell me all kinds of stuff. I said, I'm running

practice. I went to the Olympics. I won two hodge trophies. You're at my school because you want to learn how to be the best and I'm going to help you be the best. Yeah. Just listen to me. I don't care what you like. I don't care what you like. Some days, every once in a while, hey, you guys want to play a game? All right, let's play a game. Right.

Every once in a while. Just to keep it fun. Just to keep it fun, right? Hey, you want to do this? Let's do that. Every once in a while. Okay? I'll indulge you.

But most of the time, you're here. And so, you know, we don't really push our young kids too hard. I'll tell about high school guys. You're telling me you want to be a state champion. You're telling me you want to go to college. You're telling me all these things you wanted to. I know what it takes to get there. I've been there myself.

I've seen many other people achieve those things. And so, you know, and there's a lot of, you know, it's really funny because people choose in this, you can go MMA, we can go life. People choose what they value, right? And I'll just give you a simple example. I got this, I got this one kid who's probably listening to the show right now because I know he loves you. What's his name? I can't give'll just give you a simple example. I got this one kid who's probably listening to this show right now because I know he loves you. What's his name?

I can't give one of my kids a shout out, not all of them. You're right. He's going to know who I'm talking about. He goes freaking hard. Just boom, grind, grind, grind. I couldn't ask for a kid to work harder, Joe. But when I start teaching technique,

he tunes me out. And then we go to a national tournament and he places, but he gets scored on a whole bunch by the technique we were just drilling. And then I say, hey, bud, you just tuned me out the last three weeks. We were just drilling that thing and you just got your ass kicked by it. And so I love the fact that

you want to go hard, but you need to also value the technique, right? And then there's some people who value the technique too much. And all they want to do is technique. And then when it comes to going hard, they don't go hard, but you need to also value the technique, right? And then there's some people who value the technique too much. And all they want to do is technique. And then when it comes to going hard, they don't go hard enough, right? Because in wrestling or in any venture you want to take in life, there's not just one way to be successful. You need a bunch of different attributes to be successful. And so if you overvalue one or another and you devalue other things, you're not going to be as successful as you could be.

You might still be successful, but you're not going to reach the pinnacle because you're not putting yourself in the right situation. It's funny because in a lot of ways, it's like what you were talking about earlier, the two sides of the coin of a fighter being a wild person who doesn't care, the cowboy, and then the other guy who's like super systematic, everything's controlled. Yeah, you almost have to have everything. And the fighters that have those really strong attributes just have to be aware that those attributes are strengthened even further by technique. Yeah, 100%. And so, again, it's both sides of the coin to me. Another one would be something called beginner's mind and then know it all, right?

When you come into practice, you need to have a beginner's mind. I mean, I got to work out with three or four time world champion, Olympic champ Jordan Burroughs last week, and he was asking me questions. It's like this guy really cared about learning from every possible source. And he's already at the pinnacle. And he's still trying to learn.

Interesting thing that Dominic Cruz said during the broadcast about Stipe Miocic. That Stipe, when he went to Alliance MMA, was asking everybody everything. You have to. Yeah. But then when you go into a competition, you can't have the same mindset,

thinking, oh, I don't know, I need to ask, right? And so kids who have just the beginner's mind, they're great in practice, but then they go into a match and they're like, coach, what should I do here? What should I do? What should I do? It's like, just go wrestle.

You know how to wrestle. But then kids are coming to practice like i know it all right well that's a very unhealthy mindset also because it's great when you compete it's great when you compete yeah so you got you got to balance both those things right like you can't have just one because if you're i know it all i'm a badass that's great for competition but you come into practice you're gonna stop your learning right now when you are coaching kids how much time if any do you spend on mindset and so every I on my Facebook every Monday I do this mental Monday and then I usually repeat repeat it or something

fairly similar to the kids in practice but I also think it's a lot you know I think competition is where you get your really really good teachable moments because that's when kids care the most. And so like the kid I was talking about, when he loses because he didn't want to listen to me, I could say, well, look at this. This is a great example. I do private lessons with this fourth and fifth grader, their brothers, and like five weeks in a row, you're doing this wrong.

You're doing this wrong. You're doing this wrong. You're doing this wrong. They don't want to listen, right? Then they have a match last week. They do it wrong, and it didn't cost them the match, but it almost cost them the match. Now I can say, every single time I say you're doing this wrong,

I can say, remember that time in that match when you got put on your back because you did it wrong, and you refused to listen to me? So I think that matches create great teachable moments. Like, hey, remember when you wilted under the pressure because you weren't tough enough? Well, you need to practice a little harder so you get used to that pressure. Remember when the referee made a bad call and you flipped out because he made a bad call and then you didn't think about, well, I still have to

wrestle the rest of this match, right? So there could be all these, there's all these teachable moments within competition where you can say, point to something very clearly and say, well, look at this and see how this affected you and see how you would have been more successful. So I think for a mental aspect, it comes a lot more on a one-on-one basis. And sometimes I'll use it in front of the whole team. I don't like really picking on people. Every once in a while I will.

So I think this competition provides a lot of teachable moments for athletes to see, well, am I stronger here? What do I need to work on? Because, again, you can't say one mental aspect makes a guy successful. It's this conglomeration of many, many, many mental aspects that will make you highly successful. Now, when you're coaching, whether it's coaching wrestlers or MMA fighters. I don't coach MMA fighters anymore. None? Zero? Okay, I help a couple buddies, but I don't.

You don't consider it? No, I don't really. Just help a few buddies.? Okay, I help a couple buddies, but I don't. You don't consider it? No, not really. Just help a few buddies. So let's just say when you're coaching wrestlers. Do you concentrate at all on strength and conditioning, or is it from the wrestling that you get most of your strength and conditioning? So we only got them an hour and a half, three or four times a week. And so we don't do a lot of strength and conditioning.

I know, especially with the older kids, I recommend they do some on their own. You know, for a college program, for a high school program where we're getting them Monday through Saturday, maybe twice a day possibly, obviously we're going to do that. But, you know, we're an academy, you know, we're kind of on our own. We get them three or four times a week. So it just doesn't trump what we need to do in that short time window. How do you balance it out, though? How do you know how much strength and conditioning to do versus how much technique and skill work? I mean, at the college level, are we talking about? Because we do no strength and conditioning.

And I recommend kids do it on their own. And if I had 12 hours a week with them, I would do that. But we don't. We don't have that ability to. I mean, I think it's important. I think it's really important. I don't have that ability to. I mean, I think it's important. I think it's really important. I don't think it trumps especially knowledge. And then if kids wrestle really hard against each other, and Kale had that one saying, like, wrestling is the best strength and conditioning.

I can't remember what he said. Something. If you wrestle really hard against each other, you're going to develop those things. And it's like, I think, like, people, when I grab people or squeeze people, they're like, oh, my God, I've never felt anything like it. And I think that comes from, that doesn't come, if're like, oh, my God, I've never felt anything like it. And I think that comes from – that doesn't come – if you put me in a weight room, I can do nothing abnormal. I am not abnormally strong in any exercise. I'm actually like on a college – division one college team, I'm significantly less strong than most people.

Right? But then when they wrestle me, they're like, holy shit, I've never felt anything like that. And I think it's because a lot of those things that I do are very, very, very wrestling specific. And I developed that strength because when I grab someone in practice, I freaking grab them as hard as I can. When I squeeze them, I squeeze them as hard as I can. And so now from doing that thousands of times, I've developed that squeeze or that strength. And so I think strength and conditioning is important, but I don't think it trumps doing other stuff. And if I had all the time in the world and these kids didn't have to go to high school or middle school, I'd probably put them through some.

But we don't have that luxury. What did you do when you were fighting in MMA? How much did you devote to strength and conditioning? Twice a week-ish. Maybe three sometimes. What kind of stuff did you do? So I had a personal trainer since I moved to Milwaukee. And then I actually helped them open up a CrossFit gym.

And it wouldn't be, not specifically CrossFit workouts, but kind of that type of work. Nothing slow where I'm doing three sets of 10, then two sets of eight. You know, nothing slow like that. Potentially, you know, one or two days we might do like a slower start. But, you know, I think fighting, you need to be very highly active. You know, you need to be in really good shape. You need to be able to move a lot of things really fast. So kind of CrossFit-type stuff I think is probably the right direction to go.

And now when I go back to college programs, besides the heavyweights, the in-season stuff for college programs is mostly higher-paced stuff, which I think is very relevant to both wrestling and fighting. So did you do, when you were saying you you were doing like CrossFit style workouts, so were you doing like kettlebells, box jumps? Yeah, everything. So when I said that, I just meant that, you know, we were moving at a high pace through a lot of stuff, you know, and it would be like he would tell me, hey, do go do some,

you know, do sled pushes, do this, do that, do that, do that. Now, what about like your diet and nutrition and supplements and things along those lines? I have never been that much into nutrition. So listen, I don't, okay, I was fat when I was a little kid, right? Because I ate too much. At age 11, I said, I don't want to be fat anymore. So I went from 130 pounds to 100 pounds. Damn, you lost 30 pounds at 11?

Six, fifth grade? No, sixth grade, sixth grade. When you're 100 pounds, that's a lot of weight. That's 30% of your body. Well, yeah, I was fat as shit. What were you eating? Everything. And you were wrestling then, too?

Yeah, and I was having some success because when you're fatter, there's not many people to compete against, right? Right. So anyway, so I lost 30 pounds in sixth grade, so I stopped drinking soda. I had this whole list of stuff I just cut out. That's amazing you had that discipline at 11. Yeah, I know. So now when I look at kids, I think the mental maturity is huge in long-term success,

being able to make, like, see the future and make decisions on what you want to do at that young age. So I lost 30 pounds. And so now I've slowly started, like, reintroducing a lot of stuff. It's like soda's gross. I haven't drank a soda in forever. You know, they're gross. Fast food, I cut out fast food. I don't ever, I haven't drank a soda in forever. Fast food, I cut out fast food. I don't ever.

I haven't eaten fast food in 20 years. I mean, it's just disgusting. And so I eat generally healthy. My wife and I cook at home a lot. We make really healthy food. But I don't take any supplements, zero. No multivitamins? Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. So you get all your nutrients from your food. Yeah. And I just figured like, so I tried a couple supplements in college and I never felt anything from them. Like I didn't feel any different, you know? And so I'm like, I didn't feel anything.

Why am I going to go take that? I don't need to take it. And then so then obviously I became like this anti-PED crusader, you know, by chance. And so then it's like, well, now I really can't take anything. Because if I go take something and I pop hot because these idiots are putting something in the supplement that shouldn't be there, I'm going to look like a total asshole. Right. So I literally, I didn't even take protein. I mean, I took nothing.

Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. So did you make sure that you ate the proper amount of vegetables, green leafy vegetables? No, I just ate some food and went and scrapped. I mean, you know, like it's like healthy food, like we're eating salads. Right, of course. You know, I'm not eating cake and ice cream and pizza and that kind of stuff.

And we're eating healthy food at my house, you know, but I'm not measuring the grams of this or grams of that. the grams of this or grams of that. So I really think one of my, and this has been proven by science, that you only have a certain amount of time every single day to have a high amount of mental focus on stuff. And so I think, like, my training is more important than focusing on nutrition and stuff. And so I want to really, like, really zone in, really high-level focus when I'm training and stuff.

And so I think if I worry about all this other stuff, it'll take my focus away from that. Right or wrong, that's kind of how I thought about it. That's a smart way to approach it. And it never really affected me. I mean, like I said, you know, even when I took the supplements in college, I never really felt them at all. So it's like, well, if I don't feel it, why would I do it?

It's kind of ironic, though, that you were an anti-drug crusader and you went to the one place that doesn't drug test. I know, right? It really hurt me. It's kind of crazy. But, you know, and it is, if you look at, so we talked about like Singapore being so fantastic and having a really high GDP. A lot of the countries over there, Indonesia, Manila, you know, they, Manila, Philippines,

they don't have huge high GDPs, right? I mean, they're not super wealthy countries. And so when we think about how much it costs to buy a lot of the steroids that are readily available in America, they're just not as available. And so I think they do have a point. And if you look at the athletes, there's not a lot of athletes that look like Yoel Romero. Now, Yoel Romero is probably not using, like I pointed out earlier. Well, he's tested clean, except once he gets a tainted supplement, but they proved that

it was a tainted supplement. So when you look at their athletes, maybe except a few of the Russian ones, they look pretty normal. It's probably unlikely that they're using. Except for a few of the Russian ones. Except for Russia, they can't help it. It's like part of the culture. They can't help it.

That's so crazy. Yeah, that one Russian guy that I fought in April of 16, he was freaking enormous. And the other thing that I think a lot of MMA people are using, some type of, oh my gosh, I'm blanking. What gives you endurance?

EPO. EPO, that type of stuff, because if you watch a college wrestling match, how tired people get in seven minutes. Right. And then we're fighting 25 minutes and you're not going to get tired. Like, that's not normal. Well, people have definitely tested hot for that in the UFC. Who's the guy that fought Mighty Mouse?

Yeah. Bagutino. Russia. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. So, but I think more people are using that. And I think if you, you know, I don't have any conclusive evidence, but if you look at

when USADA started and then how some of these people fell down straight down. Their bodies look different. They look different. They're competent. Johnny Hendricks would be one that comes to mind. What's his freaking record since USADA? It ain't very good. I'll tell you that much.

All of a sudden, he can't make weight. Obviously, I watched Johnny because I couldn't stand Johnny. He beat me when we were 17. I tried to wrestle him. He was 165, I was 174. And I wanted to wrestle him for the All-Star Classic. And I called the people who put it on. I said, I want to wrestle him.

And they turned the match down. So I wanted to get that one back. And I never got to get it back from when I was 17. So I've been following Johnny pretty closely. If you watch Johnny, the Condit fight, prior to that, he gets so tired in, like, two rounds, right? I mean, just exhausted, exhausted. And then all of a sudden, he's going these five-round fights, and you're like, whoa,

how are you going to get tired? That exhausted in two rounds, and now you can fight for five rounds, Johnny. Like, what's going on here? Well, I mean, in his defense. I don't got any proof. Team Takedown, they implemented a pretty fantastic program over there. I mean, they spent a lot of money on it. And that was the whole thing where they were paying him, but then they wanted 50% of his earnings.

I got the same offer right out of college. Did you? Yeah, we were both graduating in 2007. How does that work? I felt like he was betting against myself. They paid you $100,000 a year for seven years. They got 50% of your career earnings. And I said, my thought was, well, if I ever make it really big, I'm going to make a million dollars a fight, and I'm going to pay them back in one fight.

You know, like, it would be like hedging your bet against yourself, and I don't ever bet against myself. Yeah, but for them, I get it, too. It's like they have to have some sort of a reason to put out that investment. And it's a big bet whether or not you're going to be able to be a superstar. Absolutely. So if you think you suck, it's good to take that bet. If you think, I don't know if I'm going to make it, dog. I'm okay with making a little bit of money.

Yeah. Then it's a good bet. It doesn't seem like the best strategy. It doesn't seem like it. I mean, it's interesting. And I think there's probably somewhere in there with, you know, I know a few managers where you go pick out, it's pretty proven that high-level college wrestlers are going to make really damn good fighters.

That's pretty proven. So going to try to find a couple every year, spending some money on them, and then getting a percentage of their earnings, that's probably a pretty, I don't want to say a safe bet for the people putting out the money, but it's, you know, Team Takedown had Jake Rochalt, who was an amazing wrestler, and for whatever reason, he just didn't transition great to fighting, right? He was good, but he wasn't great. And it was like for as good of a wrestler as he was,

you probably thought he was going to be a little better. Yeah, what do you think is the factor? Like if you had to look at a wrestler. Because there's not a lot of outliers like that. Yeah. Like where, you know, like, and so when we talk about how good Jake was, he still made the UFC. He still won some fights. So it's like, he wasn't a bad fighter, but he was a three-time NCAA champ.

So you expect him, hey, he'll probably go challenge for a UFC title. Right. And so, you know, in his case, I don't know what the factor was. But there's not a lot of outliers like that where they're a really high-level wrestler and then they don't have any success in MMA. That's really unique. You don't see it a lot. Yeah, it's interesting. I've looked at it from striking, from if you see really high-level kickboxers.

Some have a style that would readily translate to MMA. And some are fantastic kickboxers, like maybe Peter Ertz is a good example or Ernesto Huspor. I wouldn't really think that they would translate that well to MMA. Whereas Mirko Krokop, who might have been like a slight notch below them in terms of kickboxing, translates perfectly to MMA because he's so explosive and quick. And I would wonder. He had decent takedown defense too. He developed it.

For a while, yeah. He developed it. But the thing about Mirko was unbelievable power and speed. And he could just close the distance quickly and blast you. And I think that is a difference between that and a guy who's like a methodical, set things up. Yeah. Those guys didn't do as well. They didn't translate as well.

They got taken down too easily. What would you think would be like the stuff? Well, it's weird because there's so many different guys. You know, one of the other things I think benefits us wrestlers is the fact that jiu-jitsu people are stuck on doing jiu-jitsu the jiu-jitsu way, right? Strikers are stuck on striking. When we come into MMA, we know we can't win a match just by wrestling, right? So we know. We know.

I've got to add striking. I've got to add jiu-jitsu. And I'm open to that idea, right? I'm open to those ideas that I have to add those things into my arsenal where some jiu-jitsu guys are like, well, I'm just going to submit them. And they don't develop their – I mean, you can literally not name me, Joe, a jiu-jitsu guy or a striking guy. Well, maybe Jose Aldo, who has developed high-level wrestling. But you can name a lot of wrestlers who have developed high-level something else. Right?

I mean, when you see the crossover, like, John Jones was a wrestler. He can strike with pretty much anyone on the planet, right? I mean, Stipe Miocic was a wrestler. He can pretty much strike with anyone on the planet. I mean, so you have these wrestlers who are becoming high-level at these other skills, but you don't have a lot of other skills becoming high level at wrestling. And for me, I think it's the stubbornness of people who come from those other backgrounds are too stubborn to want to work a lot in wrestling, whereas wrestlers are like, okay,

teach me how to strike. Yeah, I think it's a recognition of what's important. Like George St. Pierre is a perfect example of a guy who started off with a Kyokushin background, didn't wrestle in college or high school, became a fantastic wrestler in MMA. Yeah, he's good. Yeah, and just figured it out and realized what a critical skill it is, too. Yeah, absolutely. So there's a handful of them, right? Yeah, very small handful.

Jose Aldo would be like, he wasn't an offensive wrestler, but he would be like, he was so ridiculously hard to take down. I mean, fantastic takedown defense. So there's a handful of them, but there's not a lot. But then if you go to wrestlers going the opposite direction into jiu-jitsu or striking, you can name quite a few that were able to do those things really well. You know, it's interesting when you see a guy like Khabib Nurmagomedov and you see—

He's fantastic. Fuck yeah. And his mauling aggressive wrestling. I mean, you see what a massive factor it is in fights, like the Edson Barbosa fight. That, to me, is one of the perfect examples when I say, look, the ability to take a guy down and control him on the ground is the bottom of the pyramid.

It's the most important foundation because he dictates where the fight takes place. Yeah, you might catch him when he's coming in trying to get you. You might, but if he gets you. He was like a freaking Terminator, though. He might catch him when he's coming in trying to get you. You might. But if he gets you. He was like a freaking Terminator, though. He was just like, I'm just going to come get you. Yeah, he just ate kicks and kept moving forward. I'm going to fucking beat your ass.

You have no hope. Just the constant chasing him around. He was chasing him, right? It was insane. Yeah. No, he was fantastic. Yeah. But no, I would totally agree that at the bottom of the pyramid,

it's like it's the trump card. If you're fighting a wrestler and you can't stop a takedown, you're going to lose 90% of the time. And if you're the wrestler and you can go get a takedown really easily, you're going to win 90% of the time. The only wild card in that equation is a guy like Brian Ortega

who fights so well off his back. But how many people get submissions from guard? How many of those? Yeah. Even like Anthony Pettis who got a lot of submissions from guard, a lot of that was transitions off of I body kicked Benson Harrison, I body kicked

Benson Harrison, Benson Harrison hates getting body kicked so he dives in for a takedown and gets armbarred, right? Or Gil Melendez getting guillotined and choked because he got jacked a few times, right? So there's a handful of those, but just strictly like, I take you down, you're in guard, then I submit you. Right. Maybe for Breeze Silver Doom every once in a while.

Yeah. Maybe Brian Ortega. But the number's pretty damn small. It is very small. Yeah. And it's smaller now than I think ever before because people understand the guard defense. Yeah. Even like this guy that I—so one of the things that frustrates me the most, more than

anything else I've made, is bad strategy. Just like drives me up the wall like the Lima thing. But this freaking knucklehead that fought Michael Chandler on Saturday. I didn't see it. His name's Goidi Yamauchi or I don't know

what his damn name is. So the first round he pulls guard. Like fast. Gets freaking hammered on for like four minutes. And then he ends up on bottom again

in the second round. Third round he gets taken down in I don't know 15 seconds. Did he try to get up one the second round. Third round, he gets taken down in, I don't know, 15 seconds. Did he try to get up one time? No, he just laid there and got his ass whooped for four minutes and 45 seconds. Like every once in a while, try a commercial. Every once in a while, try a triangle. But it's like, dude, you're getting your ass whipped.

You're down two rounds and nothing. Try to get up. Try to do something. Change your strategy. If your strategy is not working, you can't just stick with the same bullshit and get your ass whooped for another four minutes and 45 seconds. Give me a's not working, you can't just stick with the same bullshit and get your ass whooped for another four minutes and 45 seconds. Give me a break.

What do you think's going to happen down there? Well, I think some guys get locked into a defensive position. They realize they're getting overwhelmed, and so they just try to survive. You think so? Yeah. Really? Yeah. You don't think that way because you're a champ, and champions don't think that way.

Really? But I think for some people, there's acceptance of their fate. Ass-whipping this. This is just, they're getting their ass whipped. And so they just try to stay conscious. They try to just protect themselves as much as they can. Kind of like Edson Barbosa. But then, you know, what's interesting about Edson Barbosa,

you saw once he realized he was going to survive, like when it was like two minutes left in the third round maybe-ish, it's like the first round he's like, I'm getting fucked up. I'm just going to survive, like, when it was like two minutes left in the third round, maybe-ish. So, like, the first round, he's like, I'm getting fucked up. I'm just going to survive, right? But then when there was a couple minutes left, he's like, and then he was like, okay, I'm going to fight again. Like, I'm going to make it through this shit. I might as well if I want to make it through this, I might as well just

fight back. Yeah. Right? And so he started fighting back really hard, like, the last two minutes of that fight. He tried. He certainly tried. But there was a period in the middle where he, like, had resigned to just taking an ass whooping. Well, I think his body was just not responding. He was getting so fucked up. And you could see the pace that Habib put on him in the first round. Halfway into the round, Barbosa's like, Jesus Christ.

You see the look in his eyes. He's got that thousand-yard stare. He's like, whoa. What I signed up for. Yeah. This guy's on another level. I mean, he really is on another level. I'm fascinated by him fighting Tony Ferguson.

Apparently, they're going to do that now. It's going to happen in April. Yeah. They don't know if it's going to be for the interim title or the actual title, whether they're going to strip Conor. They're in a weird position with Conor. I think he beats up Tony. That's just my—and I've underestimated Tony before, so I could be wrong again. I just think—I think it's, again, Trump card. I think Tony's kind of one of those guys where he's pretty good everywhere.

He's pretty damn solid wrestling, high-level jiu-jitsu. But I see Khabib's wrestling being better than Tony's wrestling. So it's going to end up on the ground. And I think Tony's going to think he can submit him because his jiu-jitsu is very high-level. But I think it'll be one of those things where Khabib's just good enough not to get submitted. And then he's going to land damage and land damage and land damage and land damage. And Tony's going to get close to a submission and close to a submission and close to a submission. But not quite get it.

And then all this damage is going to just accumulate and accumulate and accumulate. That's kind of how I see it going. It's fascinating. And I also think it's fascinating now that Khabib has changed his training and has a real nutritionist and no problem making weight. So all the factors that played into him getting removed from the last time they were supposed to

fight, pulled out of the car. I thought that was kind of overblown. He only missed weight one time. He only missed, well, he missed weight one time, but his body shut down when he's making weight for the Michael Johnson fight in a similar way. But he still did the Michael Johnson fight. Yeah.

But it was the same thing happened during the weigh-in. It was a rough weigh-in. But there's been other guys who have missed weight many times. I mean, if we go to... Johnny Hendricks. Johnny Hendricks, Melvin Gallard, Calvin Gastelum. And they missed it by a long... So I thought the Khabib thing kind of got overplayed.

He missed weight one time. He had some injuries which sucked for him. But it was that what was happening for a world title fight you know they were fighting for the interim title and he missed his weight

yeah I mean and so it was one of those where he probably just like it was like okay for him to make it but be difficult and he just got just a little bit too big actually was it for

a world interim title when he was supposed to fight Tony I don't think it was the original time it was Kevin Lee right that was for the world title yeah or interim title the world title. Yeah.

Or interim title. Interim title. Yeah, that whole division is kind of fucked up with Conor not even knowing whether or not he's fighting anymore. They're going to strip him, right? Yeah, most likely. I think so. That would have mattered. Unless Conor says, fuck it, I'm in. Fuck it, I'm back.

Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it, I want to keep me belt. I don't know. The best course of action is strip Conor, let Khabib and Tony fight it out, and then if Conor wants to come back, give him a title shot, and that's going to happen, whatever. Well, I think what would be the most lucrative thing is Conor versus GSP. No, shut up, Joe.

I want to fight GSP. Oh, you do? Yes, I want to be number one. I don't want to fight Tyron because we've been friends for 20 years. Right. I want to fight GSP. That's who I want to fight. Do you think that they would set that up?

No. They would try to set up GSP versus Tyron, right? That would be the big super fight. Well, GSP doesn't want to fight anyone who can hit hard because he's worried about the brain damage. You think so? Yeah, I don't hit that hard. That's an interesting way of looking at it. Have you ever trained with GSP?

I've never trained. So I've trained with almost every top welterweight of this era except GSP. Really? Yeah. Well, GSP and Rory. But Shields, Fitch, Diaz a couple times, Tyron obviously. You know, go down the line. I've trained with pretty much everyone in this era.

What do you feel like if you do wind up retiring? What do you feel like you'll wind up doing? Just coaching wrestling? Coaching wrestling. Yeah, I love doing it. Really enjoy it a lot. So I could, I don't think I'd go back to the collegiate level.

That's obviously always an option. For the four years I coached college wrestling, I loved it. You know, and then it was like, hey, I won the Bellator title, I was making a lot of money. I should probably try to be good at this instead of just doing it halfway.

You know? And so I did that. And then we opened the wrestling schools. And now it's going well. And I really enjoy that a lot. And there's positives and negatives. I love coaching at the highest level, being able to talk at the highest level to the college guys. So I miss that part a little bit.

But then obviously if you go work for an institution like that, there's going to be a lot of bureaucracy. And I worry about that. I don't like that. I love owning my own business and having my own freedom and not having to worry about what I tweet or what I say or have anyone tell me what to do or where to be or where to dress. So I love that freedom. Obviously then running your own business has its own challenges also. But I think I will coach wrestling for the rest of my life. Whether I fight once more or whether I don't fight once more, I'll probably coach wrestling for the rest of my life.

Awesome. Yeah. Well, listen, man, I'm glad we finally got a chance to do this. Yeah, it was fun. Really, really fun. And tell people about your podcast. So I have a wrestling podcast called the T-Row and Funky Show. It's another—

It's the what? T-Row and Funky Show. T-Row and Funky Show. Yes. How do you's the what? T-Row and Funky Show. T-Row and Funky Show. Yes. How do you spell that? T-R-O-W and Funky. So Tyron... Tyron.

Tommy Rollins is two-time NCAA champ for Ohio State. Made a couple world teams. Was really close to making an Olympic team. And, you know, we were just on the phone one day and he said, I want to do a podcast. I'm like, I want to do a podcast too. Let's just do one, you know? So it's not like a job for us'm like, I want to do a podcast, too. Let's just do one.

So it's not like a job for us. We just do it for fun. We enjoy it. We love talking about wrestling. And for me, it's really nice. No one's on the same schedule as me now that I can talk wrestling with. So to be able to get on, talk for an hour a week about wrestling, it's a blast. Awesome.

So that's on iTunes. It's everywhere. iTunes and SoundCloud. People want to find you. It's Ben Askren on Twitter. Instagram? I'm on Instagram, but I don't really get into it. I don't know. I can't get

into Instagram. It's just pictures. I get it. There's no banter back and forth. I post every once in a while. But you like Twitter? I love Twitter. It's fun. Ben Askren, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks, brother. I appreciate it, man. That was fun. Yes, sir. I gotta pee brother. I appreciate it, man. That was fun. Yes, sir. I got to pee again.

I'll hold my pee. So how do you not pee?