The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #178 with Dan Hardy

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Joe sits down with Dan Hardy, a mixed martial artist, host of the “Full Reptile” podcast, and commentator for the Professional Fighters League.www.youtube.com/@DanHardyFRwww.pflmma.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE at https://ziprecruiter.com/rogan Get Visible for just $20/mo for 1 year. Use code FRESHSTART. Switch & see terms at  https://www.visible.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. My man. Good to see it, brother. Great to see you, man. What is this? What is that?

Oh, this is Moldavite. Have you heard a Moldevite before? No. So a meteorite hit in the Czech Republic millions of years ago. And the particular tech type that was created from the Earth matter falling back down to the ground became Moldavite. It's most tech tights are like a black or a brown, but mold of ice green. Let me show you. It's really interesting.

It's just holding up. Jamie's got some on the screen already. Oh, there we go. Hold it up to the light. Whoa. Oh, that's fucking dope. So it's basically like nuclear glass. Exactly that.

Yeah. Same type of, wow. And then that's the case my wife had made for me. And it's wrapped in an old chain that belonged to my dad. Oh, that's so dope. Yeah, keep with me all the time. That's fucking cool. I used to have a piece in, you know, the old Thai amulets with the little bronze.

I used to have one in that. Took it out. I took the butter out and put a piece of mold of item it wrapped in a piece of UFC canvas. And I wore it just all the time. But then my wife upgraded me as she tries to do all the time. So the UFC gave you a chunk of canvas? I have a whole canvas. Ooh.

Nice. From which fight? It was Vadoom Volkov from UFC London. And it's just, it's covered in Vadoum's blood. Oh, wow. He got his nose busted pretty badly. So, but it had to be in quarantine for like 12 months until they gave it me. Really?

Yeah, yeah. Because of blood? It's a biohazard. So does it all die after 12 months? I guess so. I mean, I guess so. It was kept in a warehouse and then they, yeah, they dropped it off for me. Do they have to check it?

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't lick it, but it looks fine to me. What could possibly be in the blood? I mean, doesn't everybody get tested? That's a good point. That's a good point. Maybe there's just some kind of rule. I think they incinerate them all now, don't they don't they keep them. I mean, they keep the, they've got the pieces with the names, but I think the rest of it gets, gets disposed of now. Huh. Yeah. I wonder if

there's any logic to that. I don't know. Or if it's just people being scared. Yeah, maybe, maybe. It's a cool thing. I've actually got on the wall of my house, believe it or not. Oh, really? Yeah, I had it in the gym, but then it's on the wall of my house now. Oh, that's nice. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's just a nice thing to have, you know. Dude, what happened with you in the UFC? Like, I don't know the story. I know you got into it with Herb Dean about a stoppage, a late stoppage. Yeah.

And you were upset. This was during COVID, right? Yeah, this was, I think it was Fight Island three. And it was the second fight of the night where it had happened. There was a heavyweight that had gone down and just took a bunch too many shots before the fight was stopped. but the G.I. Herbert Francisco Trinaldo one was the one where you heard me shout up and yell stop the fight. And it was just a weird circumstance. And look, you know, caveat, Herb's a great referees, refereed me a lot.

But every now and then people do make mistakes. And in Fight Island, everyone was tired. It was quiet in the arena as well. So you can, I mean, you can hear me yelling. It wasn't the first time I'd done it, though. I yelled at him in Moscow for a CB Dolly fight. And it's, the thing is, there's a point where I'm there for the knockouts. I'm there for the blood.

But I'm also there to make sure that once it's done, it's done. Right. And the way that Jai Herbert fell, it was just, you get the reeds. You know it. You see him fall and you're like, man, there's something not right about the way that he's falling. And then as he landed, he was looking up at the lighting rig, but his arms were kind of stretched out. So he was gone. He was gone.

He was out of it. And then there was this, and I think, of course, because it was quarantine times, it was silent in there. The time, it was like you could hear a heartbeat in the air. Mm-mm.

And there was just this moment where Trinaldo stood over him and looked at Herb. And Jai's still on the floor, kind of not fully conscious. And Trinaldo just started cracking him with more shots. And that was the point where I stood up straight away

and I'm yelling, and Paul Felder was doing the same thing next to me. You actually see Herb look at me through the cage and point at me and tell me to shut up. The thing that annoyed me about it was the miscommunication about what had happened. Because the message that got back to Dana and everybody at the top was that I left my commentary desk and went over and I was stood outside the cage. And I wasn't.

Herb came to me. So like, I'm at my desk. We've got this piece of plexiglass because it's all COVID-prone. That stopped everything, didn't it? And then we had another desk in front of that. that. So Herbs basically, and Herbs doesn't move very quickly most of the time. He's a big old boy, but he was moving at pace towards me. So I stood up, took my headset off and put them down or had him in my hand. And he came over and he started yelling at me and, you know, you stay

out of it, you can't be shouting and this and that. And that's where you see me go, that was two times. It's the second time of the night. After the, I mean, as it's going on, and this was when we're not doing interviews in the cage as well, right? So I'm standing... Also hilarious. Also hilarious. Yeah. Kind of just breathing on each other, sweating and bleeding on each other.

I'm shaking hands in the hotel and everything and it was kind of odd. But because I'm not going into the cage, I'm now turning around and my interview camera is behind me. So basically what the US he wanted me to do when Herb's marching over to me was to stand up, turn my back on him and put my headset on. Me as a martial artist, I'm not going to turn my back on someone when they're moving at me with the kind of pace that he was. So everything got a bit delayed because...

I was having an interaction with Herb. As soon as the event was over, and I was on my way over to the ESPN desk, Herb and I bumped into each other, and we had just had a brief minute conversation, everything was cool. I said, look, I respect you as a referee. You left that one too late.

There was no doubt, and it was the second one the night. And there are other instances where it's happened, right? Nobody's perfect. I would make mistakes as well, of course. Very difficult job. Very, very difficult job. The thing that are not.

me though and for me it was done then. When I got backstage someone from the production team confronted me about approaching Herb, I tried to make sure that the narrative was set correctly that he actually came over to me but that never got escalated up the chain. So it was always you know you approach it official etc etc and it just so happened to coincide with where someone had approached Mark Goddard and pushed him at another event UAE Warriors. So the whole thing kind of got convoluted and bundled into the same thing. Was that the Connor situation?

No, that was in Bellator. But there was another one. It was UAE Warriors. And I think someone had kept hold of a choke too long. And then Goddard had separated the fight. And then he came over to Mark and he's trying to push Mark and stuff. And when Dana actually made the statement about if you approach an official, you'll be gone, that was actually in reference to the other thing that happened.

But it was linked him with me as well. The thing that pissed me off is when I got back to the hotel or to the airport or whatever, Herbert posted this video and he was like sitting at the airport, you know, trying to justify what had happened. But it was just like, he was saying things like, if you think you're the smartest guy in the room, and just like poking at me, just constantly. And I'm like, I've got a bunch of hours sitting on a plane on the way back to the UK now. And you know what I'm like, I'm pulling this apart. And I'm like, did I step out of line?

did I say something I shouldn't have said and I'm assessing it and then I'm going no hang on a minute like my intention is to protect that fighter that needed protecting right his family are at home sitting watching that they don't want to see him getting smashed in the face unnecessarily they know the risks of the job already

so I kind of sat on the plane on the way home and I'm like how am I going to deal with this so I dealt with it the way that I would always do I get all the facts on the table I try and organize my response and what I did was I created a video that I put up on YouTube which the UFC actually contacted YouTube and had them delete off the back end.

And it was about an hour and a quarter long. It was a decent chunk of information. But I went through what had happened on the night, other circumstances where Herbert maybe not pulled the trigger quick enough or times when he'd been indecisive like Cowboy Mazvedal, not sure whether you remember that one, cowboy went down at the end of the first round and they actually helped him back to his stool

and sat him on the stool and Greg Jackson's going, hey, cowboy, you're okay, everything's fine, then he went out and got TKO'd at the start of the second round. But if you remember that, Herb jumps in and waves the fight off at the end of the round and then decides to restart it in the second.

So I pointed out a bunch of things where he could have maybe done a better job. I also gave him the benefit of the doubt in like the Robbie Lawler Ben Ascgrin fight where to me that wasn't stop. early, you could see Roby Lawler's arm fall for a second. I think he went out for a split second in that moment. And then came back.

Yeah. And then complained about it. So in that moment. Hard to tell. Very hard to tell. But you can see Herb in that situation going, oh, man, I'm sorry. I thought you were out. Like, those things are going to happen.

I would always rather the fight to be protected than just kind of leave it for the benefit of the down. Just let them take a... It's different with a submission, of course. But the point is I was trying to create something that was quite balanced. And the other thing as well was, you know, It was Fight Island. Like we're getting tested every other day.

Like we're quarantined in our rooms sometimes. We were doing fights at weird hours of the day. So people were kind of foggy and fatigued. And it was just a weird environment. So I gave Herb and all the officials the benefit of the doubt that, you know, you're not going to be at 100% at 4 o'clock in the morning. But it was the way they responded to me, which pissed me off. And then the way that the UFC kind of pulled all their support for me, you know?

And they contact me and they said, hey, we're going to organize a conversation with you and whoever. And I said, I just want to let you know I've got this video ready to go. And I am going to post it because it vindicates what I did, in my opinion. But it also offers some understanding of what Herb was trying to do and the job that he has and how difficult it is. And unfortunately, I mean, it got a couple of hundred thousand views before it was taken down. But it's just, it's still on the channel now. If you look at it, it's just a little gray square with three dots. And there's just nothing on the back end.

They literally went into my channel and took it away. That's so weird that they could take down something that doesn't violate any laws or rules. You know, that's kind of weird. I don't know whether they contacted YouTube and said, hey, you know, he's used some UFC footage. Did you? Yeah, I did. But at the time I had permission to use UFC footage, they were allowing me to make war rooms and all kinds of. Right, because it only helps them.

That's it. I mean, I was an ambassador for Europe as well as being a commentator. So my job in my mind was to spread the word of MMA, right? I'm trying to educate everybody as much as I can. And I could make a lot more content through my channel than I could rely on the UFC to make content. So I was just trying to churn extra stuff out to keep drawing attention to it. So they've given me permission to use footage on my channel. And I'd built a company off the back of this.

I'd employed my Raptors. I think you remember meeting those guys and all that was gone you know and the thing is it was like I understand that the UFC are not going to fire me for shouting up to protect a fighter but I knew on that day

my card was marked you know and I knew that my card was marked on that day because I was too stubborn I didn't wait for the UFC to tell me what I should have said and this and that I posted my video I wanted to clear my name and I wanted to back up the reason why I'd said that because

it wasn't the first time I'd done it. It was the first time I'd done it in a quiet, empty arena. But if you go back to, I think it was Moscow, with C.B. Dalloway, and he was fighting a guy called Murta's a Leave. And for about a minute 15, he was just killed up in a ball on the floor. And he was just getting pounded. He went from fetal position to completely belly down to fetal position on the other side in the space of that minute.

And at the end of the round, Herbs just stood over him. And he's lying there like a corpse on the floor. I'm like, this fight should have been stopped easy 30 seconds ago. Even CB Dollyway came out and said that he didn't feel protected by it. But the difference was that we've got 25,000 people in the arena, so you can't really hear me shouting stop the fight in that scenario. Right, right, right. It's just an awkward situation because I like Herb.

I would never have him referee my wife. I always make a request to make sure that he doesn't, but that's more because of the history between me and him. I don't want to put him in a position where I'm going to, to get angry at him again for not doing his job. Right. You know? But I was just, I was disappointed that the UFC kind of pulled all support for me and

backed Herb in that situation. Was there a situation backstage where you got into it with someone else from the staff? Because that's what I had heard that someone said something to you and you yelled at someone backstage. I did. Yeah. I did. But in the scenario, I just left the ESPN desk and this is like five o'clock in the morning or

something now after the broadcast and I walked backstage. I won't mention his name. I love him. He's a lovely guy. But everyone's kind of ragged and tired in Fight Island. You know what I mean? And as I'm walking back to my dressing room, he came flying at me and he's like, hey, you can't ever approach an official and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, whoa, whoa, hang on a fucking minute. And like, just the intensity that he came at me with just spiked my adrenaline again. And I'm already kind of like, I'm heightened because the fights have just ended. You know what it's like with adrenaline. I'm like three days. I'm like excitedly shaking after a good event. And it was just the energy that he came at me with just pushed my energy up. So then we had this back and forth

where I'm like, hey, you need to get your facts right. He approached me and blah, blah, blah. And I don't know whether that information had already been passed on to people above him to say, Dan Hardy's just approached Herb Dean after the fight. When in actuality, that just never happened. And because that was the perspective that the guys in the in the truck had got like I've I automatically felt like I'm going to get in trouble here like I've done something really wrong right you know and I mean the thing is it's like that I've been working with with with with that man for a long time the guy the guy backstage I'm talking about I love him he's a lovely guy we've always got on if I saw him now we'd have a good conversation it was just you know you know it's like yeah heightened experience

and and just the energy that he came at me with especially with the misinformation of me now, you know, being the guy that took my headset off and marched over to the door to wait for herb as he walked out. Right, right. I just didn't do that. Like, I'm there to do my job. But ultimately, above my job and above everything, UFC and everything included,

I'm there, I'm there to make sure that the MMA is stable and the fighters are safe. Right. Because that's my instinct, you know? Everybody that gets in that cage is someone's son or daughter or father or brother, you know what I mean? And in those moments, the people in the cage, they go from being, the best fighters in the world to a very, very human victim that is not being protected by the referee.

And from a fighter's perspective, I want to feel that warlike feeling when I step in the cage. I want to feel like I can throw everything at my opponent. And I also want to feel safe that they can throw everything at me, right? I don't want to have in my mind, oh, hang on, do I need to pull this punch because the referees not going to jump in. Like, there are three people in there, and one person's got the job to protect both of us. neither of us have a responsibility to protect each other. We don't have a responsibility to pull a punch after a knock down. We don't have a responsibility to stop when the bell rings, right?

Who was the referee with Anderson, Sylvan, Michael Bisping? Oh, that's a good question. Because that was a weird one, right? That fight should have been over. Yeah. Anderson hits him with a flying knee and then hops on top of the cage and they didn't stop the fight. Was that her? It might have been.

It might have been. Look, the thing is, I mean, Herb's refereed me a bunch of times, and I like Herb. But that obviously was Anderson's beef. That was Anderson's issue. Anderson should have followed up until the referee stops. Absolutely. But you could have easily said, this fight's over. I mean, yep, that's a crazy situation.

So Michael, I think, had lost his mouthpiece. Yes. And this is also when Michael was blind in his right eye, right? Right? So you have to take this into consideration. So Michael loses his mouthpiece, and at some point in time, he points, like, that he wants his mouthpiece back.

And look at the time. We're into the last 20 seconds. Right. And it's a beautiful knee that Anderson lands as well. So he, see, he points his mouthpiece. That's you, buddy. Uh-huh. One of my favorite fights to have called.

Bang. Right on the bell. Okay, the fight's not over. He's saying the fight's not over. But in this situation, that actually makes sense because he was still conscious and he was still up

and he had his hand down. Yeah, that was Anderson's fault. Oh, for sure it was. For sure it was. And unfortunately for Anderson, he had the adrenaline dump of thinking he'd won the fight, got up on the cage started celebrating

and had another 10 minutes. And this is where Michael Bisping is just a gangster. See, he's pointing to his mouthpiece and he's communicating with Herb, but Herb didn't stop the fight. fight. I mean, the thing is, like, there's seconds left. Anderson Silver's got no responsibility

to pull any punches, right? What a perfect fucking flying need, too. God, he was a master in his prime. And this is post-leg break, too. Yeah. This wasn't even prime Anderson, you know? This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. It's good to be passionate about something,

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Meet your match at ZipRecruiter. Still one of the best fights I've ever called. This and Max Holloway, Calvin Cater, one of the best fights I've ever called. It was a privilege to be sat caged side for it. But like Bispings, you know, coming out now with 10 minutes left and stamps his authority on this fight, which was very, very impressive. But it was just, this was just a messy situation.

And I kind of didn't really mind this because of the circumstance that had played out. I mean, Herb was very clear in him saying, I didn't stop the fight. Right, right, right. But then if you remember the cowboy Soroni Masvedal fight. I do remember that one. That was different. And Herb's bad habit, at the end of the round, if there's an engagement, he steps in and he waves his arm. That's a signal of the fight's off.

Right, right? You don't wave off the round. You wave off the fight. Right. So at the end of the round, the referee's job is to get in between the fighters. Right. Cowboy was on the floor. Masvedo is already wandering off.

I mean, this is like, and watch this. So this is the problem, right? You have to leave the fighter to get back to their stall. touch him. Herb's holding him up there. Right? And then they come over. They put the seat down, the stool down. He sits down and then Greg Jackson's saying, hey, cowboy, it's okay.

This always happens to us. He's just not conscious for this whole minute. He goes back out and gets T-K-O'd almost immediately afterwards. But Herb has a habit of waving the fight off. Yeah, but that didn't look like he was waving the fight off. That looked like he was signaling the end of the round.

He didn't do this. Potentially. But then if you've got one arm in between and you wave him with the other one. You know, I just don't, you don't need to, you don't wave at the end of the round. I think by his hand movements there, I don't think that qualifies. I think he's saying stop, stop, stop. I think he's putting his hands out. He's got a hand on and a hand out.

No, the other hand's waving, that right hand's waving. Yeah, but I think he's... Well, yeah. I just, it's an unnecessary emotion. And I'm okay with the debate about it. Like, doing the breakdown of the Jai Herbert finish, I think, I think he's a, I learned something really important, which I don't know is, I've asked lots of referees and most of them have not heard about it. Fencing response, right? Have you heard of this? No. It's a

concussion symptom. And it's a weird thing. In a newborn baby, when you turn their head to the side, their arms come up like a boxer. Really? Right? It's a weird, I don't know exactly where it comes from, but it's something that happens when people get concussed. Like, you will have seen this before in K1. There was a really famous one where a guy gets kicked in the head. And as he's going down, you see it in football a lot. Yes, you see it in football a lot. So there's one with Marlon Mara. Yeah. Yeah, look, see, arms go straight. I have seen that. Yeah, you've seen

a lot of that. You want, you want the judges, you want the referees to know about fencing response to be able to recognize all of the different tells of a concussion, right? And I didn't know about fencing response until after the Jai Herbert fight. But I had, in my video that was

taken down, I had lots and lots of different versions of fencing response from K1 to football to rugby, all kinds of stuff. It's a tell of concussion, right? Like, consciousness is not removed immediately with every punch, is it? Like, you've got a, everything's on a spectrum. You're either completely conscious or completely unconscious. But the window in which the fight needs to be stopped is probably five or ten percent towards the end of that spectrum, right? The point where someone's unable to defend themselves

or not intelligently defending themselves. It's very subjective. It's very, very subjective. The problem is, like, when a referee stops too early, it's very frustrating. And we, We have seen many instances. And then we've also seen some instances where it looked like a fight could easily be stopped and the fighter comes back and wins. Frankie Edgar Gray Maynard. What a, I mean, but fights. What great fights.

Crazy fights. But in the one where Frankie won, where he caoed him, it looked like he was out before. It was like three times in the first round. Oh my goodness. I mean, Gray Maynard was a beast. He was a big, strong, powerful wrestler, really big for 155. Frankie famously did not cut weight. Frankie was one of the rare guys that fought it 155 and essentially weighed like maybe

160 if that, you know, and he was just fast and because of that he was very durable. And this is a thing that we need to, I mean, I fucking hate weight cutting. I hate it so bad. I really do. I think it's sanctioned cheating. I think we should have figured out a way to eliminate it a long time ago. But, you know, honestly, when I watch one FC, I don't think they've figured. out a way to do it either.

Like, it's not, it's almost like it's ingrained in the culture to the point where I don't know, other than like, random Usada style weigh-ins. You know what I mean? Instead of a drug test, like, hey, Dan, get on the scale. Oh, but I've been eating. I don't give a fuck. Get on the scale. Like, what do you weigh?

You're fighting 155? You weigh 190. This is crazy. Oh, no, I'm just four weeks into camp. You know, the next five weeks, I really. Tighten up my diet. Get the fuck out of here, bitch. You're huge.

Yeah. You're way too big for 155. Yeah. I mean, we'll look at Anthony Johnson. You know, one of the rest is forward. Rumble. Like, he was 2.14 on the night when we fought. We both weighed in at 171.

He was 214. That was before the days of IVs, you know? Yeah. That's crazy. You have to wonder what it does to people, you know? Oh, it destroys you. It probably had some sort of an impact on his health problems that he had. Yeah. Because he was an enormous guy.

I ran into him one time. One time at a lobby at the hotel, and I go, how much do you weigh? And he goes, 2.30. I'm like, look, get the fuck, that's crazy. You're going to lose 60 pounds. 6-0 is nuts. And he was, he was 2.30 built like a house. I mean, he was a fucking stacked dude.

It was crazy. And unfortunately, those big muscular guys can cut more weight because muscle is more water. Yeah. But it's horrible. Like, I mean, look, Izzy landed a perfect punch on Pereira, but I feel like Pereira at middleweight just could not take the same kind of shots that Pereira can take at light heavyweight. It's just, you're dehydrating the shit of yourself.

He would weigh in 40 pounds more than he weighed than, like on Fight Night. Fight Night, he would be 40 pounds heavier. That's crazy, isn't it? I think he was 21. I think he was 226. Yeah. Which is bananas. That's just bananas.

I mean, even if I think about it, I was getting up to like 186, 188. And that felt like a lot for me, cutting down to 170. Yeah. I mean, at the time, I was fairly big for the weight class, you know what I mean, compared to some of the other guys around. But it just didn't work for me. You know what I mean? Like, I invested too much in getting bigger and stronger.

Because when I was fighting before the UFC, I mean, I was fighting, you know, 10, 12 times a year. And I needed to stay close to weight. So I was always within about 10 pounds. There were very few fights before the UFC that I cut a lot of weight. And then when I was fighting out in Japan, because I couldn't use sauna. Like, I just didn't want to, you know, put myself in a position where I was having to trash bag and, you know, sweat out on the streets of Tokyo. So my weight was always. Why couldn't you use sauna in Japan?

Because of my tattoos. Isn't that crazy? I got kicked out of a gym in Japan. Did you really? Yeah, I had to go back up to my room and put a long-sleeved shirt on. That's crazy. That's nuts. The gym in the hotel.

I'm like, I'm staying here. Yeah. They said, no, you can't have exposed tattoos. I'm like, oh, my God, that's so wild. Do you have a yakuzy gym that I could go to? Yeah, right. That's because that's what it is. It's all about yakuza tattoos.

I'm like, look at me. Do you think I'm a yakuza? I know, right. It's crazy. I mean, I think it's changed a bit now, but this was... I don't know, man. This was not that long ago. I mean, I guess it was.

Maybe it was 15 years ago. When was the last time the UFC was in Tokyo? I'm not sure. I think it was more than 15 years ago. leave. I want to say it was like, shit, it might have been like 2009 or something like that. Yeah, 2007 I was out there fighting for Cage Force. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. I mean, that was back when they didn't have those options, like those small portable sauna options that they have now. Like, there's some of them, they have these hot boxes where it's like they have a little tiny heater in there

and you zip it up and you're in this little thing and you can kind of carry it with you on the road. You can check it with your bags. Yeah. The blanket. it's a really good. Veronica used that for the last couple of cuts. They're really good. But people use hot baths now. No one was hot bathing in my day. Right. Like if you were sweating, you were, working out, you were running, you were in a sauna. They were the only ways people were cutting weight. Hot bathing came in kind of towards the end of my career. What's better? I don't know. I mean, for me, I never used the hot baths. I tried it one time. I didn't really like it. And that's partly a psychological thing, I think, because for me, the hot bath was the reward after the fight.

you know so i didn't want to feel like i was relaxing the day before the fight i want i was cold show i wanted to feel like a feral animal to be honest right you know so i would i would cut weight on my own i would like it was a process of me preparing for the fight i always imagined it like it's like you know you grab your shield and you spear and it's the march to the battlefield you know you don't you don't walk out of your tent and you're on the battlefield there's a process of getting there and the weight cut for me was a part of that it was the suffering to get to the fight. So, like, for me, it was hot sauna, cold shower, you know, treadmill, pads if I needed it. I mean, Tokyo, I didn't even have a treadmill. I just put trash bags on, cut the corners off,

the old school tieboxing way. How much did you weigh before that fight? I cut seven pounds, and that was, and that was one of the reasons why I changed the way that I was doing it, because, like, I should have stopped that guy in the first round, and I didn't have the power to it. And that was his last fight. Like, he went, he passed out after the, after the fight, went to the hospital, he had a bleed on his brain. And he retired completely after that. He was... Who was that?

His name was Dizo Ishig. Oh, I remember him. Yeah, he was the king of pancreas. He was like 20... He was the favorite to win the Cage Force tournament, and I pulled him in the first round. And I went out there just with the intention of doing a normal weight cut, you know, six or seven pounds,

exactly what I would normally do. I had a little bit more to cut because of the flight. But I honestly hand-on-heart believe that if I'd either not cut the weight or I'd cut the weight in a better way and rehydrated, I would have been able to stop him and he wouldn't have had the brain damage that he ended up with, you know? Because, like, I look back to that third round, and I just, I just didn't have the power. It was like a bad dream where I'm just punching him and he's just bouncing around, he's a bloody mass.

So he just took repeated subconcussive blows. Way more than he needed to. You know? And I don't know whether he cut weight as well, but certainly the thing that played into the damage that was done to him was my weight cut. But, you know. And that's crazy. Isn't that crazy to think of?

I just didn't want to. I mean, but again, like, I have no guilt associated with that because we knew what we were doing when we got in there. And I would not hold it against him if that would have happened to me. You know what I mean? But in hindsight, pulling the whole thing apart, like, I could have been a better version of myself as a martial artist. And it would have actually probably saved him some of the damage that he ended up taking in the third. My position is that the UFC and I think MMA in general, PFL, all of them, we need more weight classes. I don't think there's nearly enough weight classes.

I think the gaps are enormous. I think the names are stupid. It's very stupid to have welterweight 170 when welterweight has been with boxing at 147 forever for a hundred years. And all of a sudden the UFC comes along and decides welterweight is 170? Like, why is it called welterweight then? Yeah. You know, imagine if you go to another country and you buy a hammer and it's a sandwich. No, I wanted a hammer.

I need to build a house. What the fuck is this? It's like a totally different thing. Like, why is it 170 welterweight? Why not just call it the 170 pound division? That's what wrestling does. They just have divisions. It doesn't need to be like a name.

The name seems silly. That's a good point, actually. I've not thought about that. I've actually developed a system of introducing weight classes over the next several years for the PFL. I mean, obviously, the problem that we have is that some weight classes are just not filling out because the fighters are just not there, unfortunately. Right. You know, but I also think that's a, that's a bit of a, that's a result of the monopolization and the kind of killing off of the grassroots of the sport, because the sport's not growing like it was in my day.

You know what I mean? It's very, very different now. What do you think is the cause of that? I think, I think the control and the monopolization of the sport by the UFC, unfortunately. How does that stop small organizations? Well, because, Anything that starts to gather some momentum, they buy them out and they got rid of them. Some, well, they certainly did buy out a bunch of organizations back in the day, right? They bought out Strike Force. They bought out Pride, but they sort of bought out Pride. They got fucked.

Yeah. Like, they thought they were buying Out Pride. Do you know the whole deal behind that? They, yeah. All the contracts are bad. Is that right? Yeah, they got a fucking DVD library. Look, over time, I'm sure it's been worth it, right?

But I believe they paid $60 million for Pride. I might be wrong about that number, but that's what I recall. And they didn't have any contracts. Like, you know, the contracts were all fucked up. So, like, they thought they were going to get Fador. They thought they were going to get everybody. And so they got a lot of the guys to come over and sign new contracts with the UFC, like Crow Cop and Nogera and a bunch of other people.

But I don't think they got nearly what they thought they were getting. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, obviously, you know, I love the UFC, and I've always have. held Dana and the UFC and what they've created for us in very, very high regard. But there has, in my opinion, we've passed a tipping point now, where now we're starting to see some of the negative effects of them kind of locking down everything. Because, like, there are certain organizations that are, they are connected with the UFC, and they're enabled by the UFC through FightPass, and then they become almost like the feeder

leagues. Like Elfair. Exactly. But then a lot of those shows are now starting to get dropped off of Fight Pass, right? And the reason for that is because Contender Series is replacing. in them. So which shows have been dropped off 5'Bowse? I think LFA's just been dropped, doesn't it? Oh, has it been? I think so. I mean, Invictor was on there a long time ago. I think they moved away themselves

but like there are, Aries was dropped a period, you know, my wife's commentator on Ares, they were dropped a while ago. What was Ares? It's the French promotion. Okay. Arras, I always say it wrong. Arras is the... And they were dropped from five pounds? Yeah, yeah. I think they've been picked up again now, but, you know, but

this is the, this is my thinking behind it, right? And I remember back in the day, when I was fighting on cage worries in the UK, and the UFC were coming over once or twice. Like, it started to kill off all the other shows because everyone was like, I'll just save my money, I'll wait for the UFC to come. Before the UFC came over and state acclaiming in the UK, we had a lot of shows that were kind of, you know, popping up on weekends.

I was up and down the country and across Europe all the time. But then when we started having two or three UFC events a year, a lot of the smaller shows just dropped off, died off. Do you think, so you think, say, Your money, meaning as an audience member? Yeah. Yeah, but you can't fault the UFC for that. Oh, no, absolutely not.

And look, and what they did when the UFC landed in Europe, they legitimized the sport. And then, you know, so the perspective started to change very quickly. Like when I was doing, when I had my title fight in 2010, I would say at least half of the interviews that I did was trying to justify the sport and why I was allowed to do what I did. Right? That was 2010. So this is back when everybody thought it was human cockfighting still. And I was getting into debates with journalists about the human cockfighting thing and trying to... Ew.

I know. Those debates are so ew. But like, and imagine trying to like attach power slap onto the side of UFC when it was then. It would have just buried us, you know? I do not like power. I hate it. I hate it. I do not like it.

And the thing is, and I'm very much, you know, as long as you're not, as long as, as long as you're not hurting anybody else or you've, you're agreeing to hurt each other. Right. I'm all for your ability to power slap each other. Just separate it from MM. I've watched a bunch of people get flatlined and bounce their head off the podium and fall backwards. I don't like it. My whole thing about martial arts is it's human chess. It's high-level problem-solving. You're working up to a moment, and you're doing your very best to not get hit and hit them.

And a flawless performance, like, it's one of the things that was most impressive about Hamzot during his first few UFC fights. I think he fought like three or four fights where he took like three punches. Yeah, Reese McKeague, John Phillips. I can't remember the other one. I called a couple of those fights. Gerald Mirshardt took nothing. That was one punch. That was flatlined one punch.

I mean, that was the craziest thing about him. It's like, look at this guy. He's not even getting hit. Like, this is nuts. And when you'd grab guys, they'd be helpless. I like skill. There's no skill in having a big hand and a fat face. Yeah.

And I don't even understand why you have chalk on your face. Why do you have, or your hand? For grip, I don't know. Is that what it is? Is it just to like the powder flies through the air? And, you know, I don't get it. Maybe dunk your head in water. I don't know.

Hey, they used to it in the kung fu movies, didn't they used to put talc on people. So when you hit them, you get a cloud of power. Did they do that? Yeah, yeah. And hitting the watermelons with the mallets to make the noises. Look, again, like PowerSlapp can be its thing and exist. Just away from MMA. You know? And what I hate to see is the likes of Herzog and Mark Smith and forest like catching these unconscious guys as they're falling.

It just attaches the sport that we've worked so hard to develop to something that is going to, it doesn't injustice to the MMA fighters and how hard they work and how much of human chess MMA is. Yeah. It's literally like taking what are those fucking smash them up derby racing events where they crash. Yeah, demolition debilions. Demolition Derby, yeah. It's like a Formula One driver and being involved in demolition derby. Like, that's fucking crazy. There's actually a reason for the chalk. It's so that they can see where the hit was made.

Oh, indication of where the partition strike lands. Well, can you see that though? They're not like moving at the speed of light. They're also not allowed to have excessive chalk and they can't use water. There's no excessive water. As you said, put your head in water. They're not allowed to do it. They have rules.

The idea they have rules is, It's so crazy. It's so crazy. But it is a reflection of how solid the UFC is right now, right? Because you go back to 2010, they couldn't have done that without having a real negative effect on the sport. I think it has a negative effect on the sport now. I agree with you.

I just think it's not going to, the UFC is so powerful and so strong now that it, like they can even take a liberty and advertise power slap off the back of it. Well, it's that. And then it's also we're in the TikTok era where it's just really all about clips. I mean, is power slap? Does it air anywhere? Because it aired on television for a while. Didn't they force it into the Paramount deal in some way?

Did they? I don't know. I don't know. I think it's much more digestible in these very short clips. You know, I don't think there's a person. Like, there's some fucking hardcore MMA fans who can tell you about guys that are competing in the amateurs and tough enough and they're making their way to the UFC and they're fighting in the LFA.

There's guys who are coming in their debuts, and you can watch YouTube videos. The guy's breaking down these guys' skill sets. And you never even heard of these cats. Guys who are fighting in Russia, guys who are fighting in Brazil. There's no power slap, hardcore fans. There's no like this guy. Fuck it, you got to see him slap. You got to see him take a slap.

You got to see the way she stares down her opponent before she gets slapped. Yeah. It's not the same, man. It's not. I mean, you can watch it. You can do it. I don't have a problem with it. This is America.

I believe in freedom but don't do it that's what I'd say I'd say don't do it you come to me I'm saying don't do it as a recommendation you don't do it

right like don't like whatever you would recommend but like I'd also say don't do jackass and you know have those guys

on my show all the time yeah every time I talk to Steve I'm gonna fucking do it man why are you doing that he's a special type man he's a special time

yeah Johnny Knoxville told me he's been knocked out 16 times out cold like that's way too many

that's way too many that's nuts absolutely I mean you have zero fights on your record you mean caoed 16 times that's real bad

hey he's got well paid out of it though he's you know you find someone else that got knocked out 16 times and yeah right that's a good point

how much did they make from that's a good point yeah I mean that's the other thing with these power slap guys is like they're making pocket money how much do they make

I know three and three five and five three yeah I was chatting to someone in Vegas and she She didn't want to do it, but she was like, I don't have a choice.

I can't get MMA fights. Why? She just couldn't get MMA fights. She was too big for most of the weight classes. Oh, yeah. That's a problem. Yeah. Look at poor Kayla.

Yeah. She's got to make 135. Every time I see her in between fights, I'm like, how? How do you get to 135? You're as big as me. This is crazy. Crazy. Yeah, I saw her the other week in Pittsburgh, and she's, I mean, she's huge.

She's gigantic. Yeah. She's got phenomenal. Genetics. Yeah, she's got that neck scar. Yeah, she got an artificial disc, which is, it's really interesting that they could do that now. And guys go, look, Al Jermaine did it and came back better than ever. I mean, that was, I mean, everybody was so upset at him the way he won the title with Piotr Yan. But he had a legitimate neck issue going into that fight and that illegal knee that he took to the head really did fuck him up. Yeah. And then he went and got an artificial disc putting his neck and then came back and dominated in the rematch. And then did you see? him in his last fight? Yeah. Fucking dude, man. That guy has the best back control in the game.

His back control is so elite. It's really incredible because he gets a hold of your back, man. It's like, my God. Yeah, absolutely. See, and I don't mean to keep picking on officials, but that is another situation where I actually feel quite bad for Aljo that he had to put on that performance and damage his brand in such a way because he didn't want to continue fighting.

Right. Right? And the officials are put in a circumstance where they don't have the confidence to just go, no, hang on a minute. That was bad. Fights over. Fights done. Right, right, right. Well, you want to give a guy the opportunity to fight still.

So you don't, this is the thing about damage. You don't know looking. Some guys can take a shot like that and then they bounce back in their fight. Look, Bisping. Bisping came back and won that fight after that flying knee. You know, and you really got to kind of like let the fighter, if the fighter's conscious, you got to let. them decide whether or not they can because you don't know it's not possible to tell by looking at someone what kind of damage they've got especially aljo with the neck next situations are so bad man

but but the crazy thing is that with these artificial discs now like widenedman got one um there's a quite a few guys that have gotten artificial discs in their neck now and then they go back to finding which is crazy i wonder how that changes the way that the head twists i don't know One thing I noticed on Yol Romero, whose head just doesn't twist, but he's got his neck's fused, right? His neck is fused to the base of his skull. So, like, how do you turn his head to cause concussion? I don't know. Well, there's a good argument that it makes him more durable.

Do you matter when Derek Brunson head kicked him? Yeah. He hit him with a neck kick. Like, right here, he didn't even budge because you're hitting a steel bar. So then think, didn't Tiger Woods have some kind of eye surgery? So his eye was 2010? So he has better edge and better depth perception for golf. I'm pretty sure he did.

Really? Yeah, I'm sure he had something done to his eyes. Put that into our sponsor, perplexity chain. What did they do? He could do that? He got laced. So did he have bad eyes and he got him better? Or did he have good eyes and said, what can you do?

Can you make me have fucking superhuman eyes? To correct near-sightedness, it improved him to 2015 vision. Okay. So he wasn't improved to 2020. The problem with that is with these surgeries, if you have macular degeneration and it continues to progress, you are going to need it again. Or it's going to get worse.

Like Ari Shafir got Lasik and he's like, oh, it's amazing. I have 20-20 vision. Because he had terrible vision before. And then it started going to shit after a while because it just kept deteriorating. And now is I suck. The thing is that you know athletes.

I mean, and I think it was appalled. a while ago with Olympians. Like if you can win a gold medal but you're going to live to 30 or 35, would you take the gold medal? And a good portion of them said yes, they absolutely would. Most athletes, in order to achieve their goals, would do absolutely anything. Right. So if I, if I all of a sudden discovered that having your neck fuse like your Romero means that you've got a 30% chance of, you know, less chance of getting knocked out, how many fighters do you think without their neck fuse just to give them the advantage, right? How about that Tommy John surgery that people get electively.

So they can pitch better. Before surgery, he was extremely near-sighted. He had an 11 prescription. I don't know what that, minus 11. Essentially legally blind without glasses or contacts. Whoa. And one of the greatest golfers of all time, if not the greatest. First LASIC was done after his 1999 PJ Championship win.

Yeah, here you go. Resorts an impact on his golf. Wood reportedly achieved about 2015 vision better than the standard 2020, meaning you could see more detail at distance than the average person. Interesting. He described the cup and ball as looking larger and said his ability to read greens improved and he went on a notable win streak winning five PGA tour events in a row right after the surgery.

Wow. That links into the stoned ape theory though if we're going in a massive circle, right? Because microdose in mushrooms gives you better edge and depth perception. Yes. So then the theory was that you would have better chance. of surviving, either as, you know, not becoming prey or finding prey. Yes. Right?

Yeah, better vision who'd make you hornier, so it'd make you more likely to breed, and it also makes you more creative. And, you know, Terrence McKenna and Dennis McKenna link it to the creation of language. Fascinating. Oh, it's very fascinating. I used to remember when I was in Vegas, I had a room in my house, which I think we talked about it before, which was the mushroom. And I would, like, once a week, I would, like, clear the day and I would have ceremony on a

Saturday in the evening, they'd get up on Sunday morning and go out into Red Rock and I'd do trail running. But at the point where, you know, I took six or seven grams the night before, so now I've probably got the equivalent of two, three grams in my system. But I'm running in Vbrams downhill.

And I'm, I'm like a cat. I can see the ground in a much different way to how I would if I was completely straight. So, you know, and there are some fighters that have been microdosing through fights as well. I won't throw them under the bus because...

Oh, I know a few. Yeah. Yeah. Joe Schilling talked pretty openly about it. He's got a fight coming up. Does he? Joe's back?

Fighting in Brussels. Is he doing PFL? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. How old's Joe now? I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I spied with him at Frank Mears gym in Vegas a few years ago, suffer. Obviously, I knew Joe Schilling who he was and, you know, the gym that he created in L.A. had a real reputation and all that kind of stuff. 42. Damn. Wow. But he was just, he was standing outside the back, just smoking a cigarette, came in, put his

gloves on and just beat the snot out of me you know what I mean it's such a good fighter yeah he's a beast kickboxer man I was at the last man standing event in LA when he fought like that was really crazy because you had to fight multiple kickboxing fights in a day and you know this was glory this was like who used to run bellator was the guy who ran bellator not Scott cocker no yeah no it is Scott cocker because there was a guy before Scott right yeah is it Bjorn Bion Rebner. Right. So he left and then Scott took,

and Scott was also involved in Bellator. Yeah. Or excuse me, with glory, right? Was he Strike Force? Strike Force. Scott Coker ran Strike Force? Founded Strike Force.

So who ran Bellator? Yeah, Bjorn founded it and then Scott Coker. Right. Okay, right. So that is correct. Okay. I think he was involved in Glory too. Right.

And I think I remember I went up to him and I said, this is awesome, but don't do this. Don't have people fight multiple times in a night. It's just like, because you get a concussion and no one even knows about it. Like, there's been a lot of fights where guys got concussions and they didn't get knocked out. And then you have to fight again in an hour. And then you fight again 45 minutes after that. Like, man, that's a recipe for people getting fucked up.

I know they did it back in the old days and hardcore and all that stuff. It's all great. But, man, don't do that. But you look at some of those first round matchups when they were doing that. You're like, hmm, okay, I can see what you're doing here. You know what I mean? Give people easier fights and begin. So they're ultimately trying it.

Sometimes, but it's, I think it's kind of random, you know, sometimes you get a tough one. Especially with the heavyweight K-1. I mean, you know, like some of those guys. You fight Hungman Choi or Bob Stapp, no matter how confident you are in your skill set, just the sheer size of them is a problem. Yes. Those head, the fucking K-1 tournaments were bananas. They were so good. Woo, they were so good.

Especially the life of legs. I had a friend of mine in Canada that used to get me VHS tapes back in the day. I don't know. I think he had like a satellite dish or some shit. I forget how he was getting them. But he was getting them and he was sending them to me. K1, heroes, all these, like, real obscure events he would send me. Awesome.

Oh, I had a, I don't know where the fuck they are now. I think they might even be in my L.A. house. But I had a giant box filled with VHS tapes. There were all kinds of old school fights. I used to have a, I used to have, like, a CD, like a zip CD thing that used to take with me. And I had a guy at my gym and he would, five pounds, he would burn me pride or K1 heroes or whatever. and he was finding them online and just ripping it and, you know, selling them in the gym.

But I had a whole database of stuff. IFL and all those old shows. K-1 Heroes, I loved. You know, that's kind of partially how I got the job with the UFC. When I first met Dana, like, he just got me tickets because it was the, I was on Fear Factor. And the UFC, they just purchased it. So this is 2001. This is right post-9-11 when Tito Ortiz fought Vladimir and Matt Yushenko came out with a

American flag, everybody went crazy. And I started talking to him about, like, Japan Valley Tudor, and do you know about this guy? Do you know about that guy? And I was just, like, rattling off all these fighters that he had never heard of before. I was talking about all these guys that are fighting out of Russia, all these guys in Japan. And then we started talking. And then next thing you know, he's like, do you want to do commentary?

I'm like, oh, I just want to watch. And you never thought about it before commentary? No. No. No. Well, I worked for the UFC before that. Yeah. As the post-fight interviewer, but that was in 97, UFC 12.

I remember. And so I did it from 97 and 98, and then it was costing me money because I would make way more money if I'd go work out of comedy club for the weekend than I would doing this. But it was fun. So I did it for a little while, but then it was like, I think it was UFC Japan. They wanted me to fly to Japan. And Frank Shamrock was fighting Kevin Jackson.

Is that who it was? I think he won by first round, Armbrose. bar and I was like I'm not going to fuck in Japan man I can't no I'm done so I'd quit I was like I love you guys it's fun good time while it lasted did you feel like it was gonna go where it went though no I thought what they were fucked really it was funny because you know Eddie Bravo and I were backstage at one of these events like way you know I met Eddie way back in the day so it was like this like 97 98 Eddie and I were backstage like you know what this fucking sport needs some crazy billionaires with a ton of money

who love the sport, who just, because we know it's so exciting, and we know people would think it's so exciting, it just needs to be in everybody's face. And then who comes along with Fretitas? It's like we manifested them. Yeah. It was crazy because, like, you know, one of the first events that I did for the USC,

I did for free. I did like the first 15 events for free. And I just said, just get my friend's tickets. So it was like, Eddie and I would go. And, you know, we were like, bro, it's fucking happening. It's actually happening. But even back then, it wasn't.

famous. It was just, it was in Vegas and it was, you know, it was kind of getting a little bit of attention. It wasn't until 2005 that, that Forrest Whitaker, that the main event of, rather, excuse me, Forrest Griffin and Stefan Bonner, main event of the Ultimate Fighter, that one fight changed everything. It was really crazy where, like, the stars align with one fight, the whole sport takes off. Because it really was that. I can't believe I called them Forrest Whitaker. But I did that on commentary.

I called Robert Whittaker, Forrest Whittaker, live on commentary. I've called people, I fucked up Juliana Pena's name once. I fucked people's names up. It's like you have so many names in your head. That's what people don't understand. Like you and I, between you and I, we probably have 500 fighters' names in our head. And then plus jujitsu guys, plus wrestlers, plus boxers. like oh my god there's so many names in your head yeah and then project that into the history of the sport now

because we've got the history of the sport and the history of boxing on top of that as well the way i describe my memory it's like i have a whole bunch of boxes of folders and if i find that box i can open that bitch up and talk to you about Marvin haggler versus one rolled in and it'll tell you like the dockdown was fake and this and that and haggler went on to stop him i'll tell you details but if i don't have that folder in front of me i'm like uh I don't know why. I don't know why I can't immediately remember sometimes. But sometimes I can pull that box out and it's right there. And I can just get that folder out and boom.

Do you remember the first time you sat down at the commentary booth and put the headset on? Yes. Yes. That was UFC 37 and a half. London? No. Oh, no, of course. It was just after that, though, right?

UFC 38 was London. Well, it was 37 and a half because it was like an event they put together for best, damn sports show. Right. So remember Best Damn Sports show, which was on Fox Sports, I think, Fox Sports Net? And so what it was was they had this opportunity to do a show, and this is when Dana asked me to do commentary. And I just did it as a favor. He goes, it'd be great if you did it because it was the Fear Factor Days, and it was Chuck Lidell versus Vitor Belfort.

I said, oh, fuck yeah, I'll do it. And I think, I don't remember who else. I think Robbie Lawler might have made his debut. Steve Burger versus Robbie Lawler. That's right. Thank you, sir. Yeah. So it was fun.

And I did it once and then they asked me, would you do it again? I'll like, okay, I'll do it again. But it was really just, I just kept doing it. It wasn't a job. Like I said, I didn't even ask for money. I did like 15 of them. And then finally Dana says, look, I want to sign you to a contract. I want to pay you.

I was like, okay. All right. It was like reluctantly got dragged into being a commentator. Yeah. to you by Visible. Ah, spring is in the air, which means time for some spring cleaning. We're cleaning out the garage and finally tossing those mystery cords. But while you're cleaning out your junk drawer, take a look at your wireless bill.

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Refresh your wireless with Visible. Head to visible.com to get started. Terms apply, limited time offer, subject to change, see visible.com for plan features and network management details. That's kind of cool. Yeah, it's similar to me, though, really. I mean, I was, because I've been sidelined because of my heart situation and they wouldn't clear me in California. So then the UFC just wouldn't match me anywhere. And I'd had like a month or two of just kind of wallowing and being depressed and, you know, avoiding MMA gyms.

and Lorenzo had invited me into the offices on Sahara and I'd gone and sat with him and we were chatting through and he said, hey, you know, I'm going to send you out to California. I want you to go and see my specialist, you know, my family specialist and get a second opinion and et cetera. But he said also, we've got another plan for you. He said, I won't spoil it. At some point you'll see Dana and Dana will tell you what the plan is.

And as I was, it was like a movie. As I was walking out of the officers, a stretch monster Hummer pulled up. Literally, I'm like, what's going on here? And Dana got out and he was like, oh, just the fucking blah blah, blah. I just wanted to see. He was like, I want you to go to the UK, I want you to be

an ambassador, I want you to do commentary, and I said, that's great, you know, let me know what, I need media training, he's like, no, none of that, I just want you to be you sitting Caged side. And I remember getting to the first UFC London event, sat down at the desk, just fighting imposter syndrome bad

and seeing all the fans starting to trickle into the arena. And then someone from the truck came through and said, oh, I've just realized we've not practiced any post-fight interviews. I said, oh, I'd not really thought about it, but it's just talking to fighters. I'd be fine. He said, no, no, no, I'd feel better if we practiced.

I said, okay. He said, okay, Brad Pickett wins by knockout. Go. I'm like, how did you knock him out? With my first question. And it was weird because it was like, I'd not even thought about it up until that point, But when they raised the, when they, when they, when they, they ask me to do the, the kind of practice rehearsal with not any scenario that was realistic, then all of a sudden I started to panic.

Because, but I, I remember sitting there feeling like a, like a 14 year old, like someone's going to tap me on the shoulder in a minute and throw me out. Really? Really? Yeah. That's funny. It felt really weird. That's interesting. I don't remember if I felt imposter syndrome.

I think because I wasn't getting paid, I probably thought it was just fun. Yeah. I probably didn't think it was a job. So I probably thought, like, oh, they just want me to do this because I'm famous and it would be good for the sport if the Fear Factor guy is enthusiastic about the sport. So that's how I thought about it. And so, like, I would go on like the Howard Stern show and stuff and we wind up just talking about the UFC. And this was, again, I wasn't even working for the UFC. I was there to promote Fear Factor. But I was talking about how much I loved UFC. And I just, I think it's awesome. And back when I was competing, no one knew what the best sport. It's so hard for people to recognize that today because it's not that long ago, you know, like, when I was last time I fought was like 88 or 89, you would think like we kind of had it sorted out back then, but you didn't. No one knew. No one knew. Like, what was the best thing to study? I remember I went to this gym.

A friend of mine was teaching at this university and I would go and train with him. and his students sometime and I would go there and they had a judo program there and I'd be like look at these suckers practicing this stupid judo like this is useless you can't even kick anybody I mean all those guys would have killed me they would just grab me and fucking throwing me on my head but I didn't think that I was totally

delusional I thought I was going to kick them into the fucking shadow realm and no one knew what the right thing to study was if you took kung fu you thought kung fu was the shit Bruce Lee right I'm wearing a Bruce Lee shirt he was really the only guy that was wise enough to realize you just got to take a little bit from

everything and having one style whether it was his initial style which was Wing Chung or you know whatever it is karate that's not the way the way is the right way to win in close quarter combat you need to learn how to grapple you need to learn boxing you need to learn how to block correctly you need to learn how to kick correctly back then we didn't know and we always wondered like what would happen if they did like a fucking put a bunch of guys together. And I knew Benny the Jet had competed in some weird stuff in Hawaii. But no one really knew.

So when it was finally happening, to me, I was like a little kid. I was like, oh my God, it's happening. It's really happening. And I was like, please let this work. Please let this work. And then to watch the evolution of it from the beginning,

which is just hoist going in there and dominating everybody because no one knew Jiu-Jitsu. And he had the Giants. He had all this friction. It was amazing. And then everybody took Jiu-Jitsu, including me. I was like, I got to learn Jiu-Sutu. And then to watch the evolution, like these giant juiced-up fucking wrestlers come along, like Mark Coleman, and Marker, smashing everybody.

They're like, oh, my God, you've got to get on the sauce. And so everybody, you know, Vitor got up to like 240 pounds and his fucking neck start at the top of his head. Oh, yeah. Bro, I was training the same gym as him when he made his UFC debut. So I was training at Carlson Gracie's gym. So you kind of knew what was coming then. Well, I didn't. I knew he was awesome, but I didn't know how good his hands were because I only saw him doing

Jiu-Jitsu, right? But I knew he was a beast. Like, and he was a black belt in jujitsu at the time and, you know, a phenomenal athlete, just so fast. But then I saw a video of him. He fought John Hess in Hawaii. Do you remember John Hess? Yeah, Sapa fighting. So John Hess was this giant guy.

He was like 6-7 or something like that. And Vitor just fucking took him to the ground and bang, bang, bang. Bing, bang, bang, bang. Hit him with like 30 fucking unanswered punches in a row like in three seconds, like and put them away. And then they're screaming, jujitsu, jujitsu. I was like, wait a minute. This is not, I mean, I get it.

You know jujitsu. That was boxing. You used striking. But it was like to be there at the very beginning and watch this evolution. There it is. There's Vitor. Look at this. Boom, boom, boom.

My God. And look how it's thin. Vitor was back then. Yeah. That was Vitor at like, you know, 199 pounds, maybe. Maybe 190. Oh, he was so fast.

And so that was there for his UFC debut. So that was UFC 12. So he fought Trey Tellegman. And Trey Tellegman, like, had no idea that this guy could box that way. Like, no one did. They thought he's a cross and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu black belt.

I was like, okay, you know, avoid the takedowns. This guy's really good on the ground. And he just starts tuning people up with his hands. Yeah. And Teligman was, Lions them, wasn't he?

He was one of Ken Chamrook's guys. Did he ever miss him peck? Yes. He was in a car accident, I believe, when he was a child. Oh, is that right? Yeah. And his peck was not attached on one side. He was fucking jacked, dude.

And then he fought Scott Ferozo after that, who was like a giant fat guy. He was also like a tank, you know, like a huge fucking knockout artist. And Vitor tuned him up, too. Just the speed he had. So this is like, you know, 1997. And it was wild. And that was in like a high school auditorium in Dothan, Alabama. It was like really weird.

Crazy. I was like, this is so, these are so strange. These events were so bizarre. You know, I was hanging out with the Lionsden guys. We go drinking together and stuff. It was fun. But it was just weird. It was like, what is this thing that we're doing?

This is it. The Dothan Civic Center. That's what it was. Look how small it is. Man. Look how little that place is. Ninety-seven. Yeah.

So that would have been the time when I was, I was at art college. Yeah. And I went to Virgin Megastore. There you are. Jeff Blatnick. He was the fucking man. I went to Virgin Megastore.

And look how... You're beautiful, man. Look at... I was so pretty. And no one taught me, no one told me what to do. No one gave me any instruction. Nothing. They gave me a microphone.

And then said, we're going to come to you backstage. I'm like, what do you want me say? Like, literally. It was fucking nothing. It was nothing. You probably knew better than everybody else, though. Well, luckily, I was a huge fan, so it was pretty easy. I got the job because they had a guy that was doing it before,

and they got rid of him, and Campbell McLaren, who was one of the producers, was good friends with my comedy manager. And he was just casually talking. It's like, we're looking for someone to do post-fight interviews. And he's like, Joe loves the UFC. He's like, you think you do it? And so they called me up. I was like, fuck, yeah, let's go.

I was like this is, and this is so it was like 97, I guess I was 30. Yeah. Is this how the judges used to announce their picks? They just held up a whiteboard. I guess so. There was a bunch of rules at the beginning that seemed very strange to me too. I saw. They had overtime rules.

Ooh, I forgot about that. Yeah, they called them laws of the octagon. Valigi. Validi-I-ish, man. He was a lunatic. Oh, he was a madman. So intense. Mad dog.

Yeah, it says, no biting, no eye gouging, no fish hooking. That was it. You can hit people in nuts. That's it. That's it. I tell you what, I've got a piece of my gum missing from someone trying to fish hook me. Oh, God. They took a piece of the gum away with their fingernail.

I'm going to have to get something done. I've got some teeth that need fixing at some point. Jesus Christ. Not nice. Aye, aye. Fish hooking dangerous stuff. Yeah, that's nasty. If someone's fish hooks you, you should bite their fucking fingers.

Oh, I think so. You should be able to bite them. I'm like, fuck you. Get your fucking fingers out of my mouth, motherfucker. That's interesting about commentary. I've always wondered because, you, everybody came after you, right, when it comes to MMA commentary. So like, like in the early days when I was first doing the job,

no one knows what a color commentator or a play-by-play commentator is back in the day. I think there's more of an understanding now. So my response to everybody is, I'm going to try and do Joe's job. You know what I mean? But you'd set the bar so high. I think partly that's what fed into my imposter syndrome. I'm sitting in. Look, the podcast that you did with Dustin, I appreciate all the kind words you did.

I want to throw it back to you though because you were the person that raised the bar for everybody else to reach. And I didn't realize because I never had an intention of being a commentator. It just came off the back of my career because my career was ended abruptly. So then anyone that ever says,

oh, you're actually pretty good at this. The reason why is just because I listen to you religiously. Like a lot of people watch the fights don't pay attention to the commentary. Like I tuned in. I was paying attention to everything that you said. So even, even the delivery and the cadence and stuff,

what you did laid the foundation for me to learn. So I very, very much appreciate that. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. It was accidental. Same for me. But it can't have been accidental because I had somebody to learn from.

You know, that's why I asked you because you didn't have anybody that kind of, you know, set the job out. Well, it was weird because I think I was one of the first people to do it that had a real understanding of Jiu-Jitsu. So when the fights would go to the ground, the play-by-play guy would have, you know, like, Goldberg, great guy, didn't train, didn't know what the fuck was happening. So I would have to, and also people at home, what's going on? So I'd have to walk them through exactly when someone's in danger and why they're in danger and how they can get out of it and when they're free.

Okay, see his elbow? He's free now. He's good. And so my mind is spinning like 100 miles an hour. I'm like, now I don't have to do that as much because people kind of understand. understand things much more. But there's certain situations in certain positions where I would have to say, no, this is a submission.

Like he's very close here. Like, okay, now he's got to cinch it up. He's got to put his ankle behind. It's like, he's got it. And you'd have to like talk people through it. So it was different than any of their sport because it was, you're kind of like educating people on what's happening. Like I couldn't use obscure.

Even though I used the obscure term like, you know, crackhead control or something, like weird stuff like that that Eddie comes up with these fucking ridiculous. ridiculous names for submissions and positions, but I would have to explain why this works and what's happening and what's going on and what's in danger, you know, and it was weird because I felt like this obligation to Jiu-Jitsu that that was the one thing. Like, if someone kicks you in the head, you get it. Someone knee, someone in the head, oh, you hit him with a flying knee, you get it. But explaining someone like what, like, you know, a calf crusher is, like that's a weird fucking position. Yeah. Like what is going on there?

You know, explaining to someone, you know, why a triangle works and why it doesn't work and why someone's safe, you know, with a head and arm choke. Why, okay, he's okay. He's got his hand over his ear. There's, it was all this weird stuff where it was partially trying to be entertaining, but also. trying to educate and I had to kind of figure it out as I did it you know as I called I don't know how many fights I've called oh thousands yeah I mean I've called a lot you've been doing it a lot longer than me why don't do as many now you know I only do North American pay-per-views and I don't even do I don't even go to Canada anymore so fuck them

I love Canadians it's the government that fucking creeps me out but um the the amount I was doing back then I was doing like 20 shows plus a year 22 shows shows a year. So I was doing a show almost every other weekend. I was flying somewhere. Yeah. And it was exhausting. It was a really, it was a problem. But it was, in one point in time, it became really my main job after Fear Factor was over. And I loved it, but the traveling was brutal. You'd go to Australia. You'd come back from Australia. And now you're going to Dallas. You're going to Dallas. You go to New York. It's like, ooh. Yeah. I was in us. First time I went to Australia with the UFC out, it was a 56-hour round trip and I was on the ground for 30 hours.

You feel like you're on drugs. I feel like someone gave me a drug. I don't even know where I am. I loved it though. I loved being there. I was like, wow, what a crazy country. You guys are on the other side of the planet. And you're all cool and the food's great.

It's fun. And I got all the gigs that most people didn't want to do. I was being sent to all of the farthest reaches. You know what I mean? Like I did, I mean, Singapore, I loved, Japan. I loved. You know, going out to Australia to do those events. I did a lot of the Russian events.

You know, I was even back at one time in case Bruce Buffer didn't make. I was going to be the Really? Really? Yeah. Oh wow. That's crazy. That's a hard job.

Absolutely. That guy set the bar. He almost dies every event. Really? We're looking at him like one day is going to be loud. Because he, you know, Bruce has got to be like 70 years old now, right? Yeah. Like one day that motherfucker is going to stroke out in the middle of

Alessania! Just fucking pop. Blood starts leaking, that's it. But if you ask Bruce, that's the one. way would you like to go. That's how he'd want to go. One of my craziest experiences. I remember coming down a slide, like a metal slide from the Great Wall of China with Bruce Buffer

in front of me and Uriah Faber behind me. And we're going down on these like rugs on the way down from just weird experiences that you have on the road with the UFC. Yeah, that was good. I've always loved Bruce. Yeah, he's a great guy. It's another thing as well is like, and you'll remember this from back, you know, back when I made by debut.

like I would get into it with Bruce. Like, I'd be like calling Bruce on and he always used to come to me. I loved it. Because it was just the idea of hearing Bruce Buffer say my name was just wild to me. The Outlaw Hardy! Dude, I'll get goosebumps. We always talk about like whether or not it's a jinx to fist bump buffer. You know, like me and Annick were talking about it, but I was like, no, Khabib fist bumped them every time.

So it can't be a jinx. Because you look for jinxes. You look for things that are a bad omen or a bad sign, you know? Yeah, weirdly superstitious, aren't we? We like to hang stuff on things that aren't our responsibility. Isn't that weird? It is strange. Especially with fighters.

Fighters are super superstitious. Yeah. They get real weird about the things they do, their rituals before fights, what they eat, what they wear. Yeah. Yeah. And like some of the things that they do, like, I mean, like Ben Henderson with the toothpick. Like crazy I was interviewing him post-fight

I'm like you have a toothpick in your mouth And he got in trouble for that Yeah Dangerous though Especially if you know you get knocked out And that toothpicks going down your throat I just didn't understand why he did it Like what is? It seems like a bit of a safety blanket

Almost it's like a familiarity that it's there It's the weirdest one of all time A toothpick in your mouth Like okay Yeah very strange I like a toothpick but not during a fight That dude's still at it Yeah

It's crazy he's got a fight coming up in Brussels Wow It's a rough fight as well How old is he now? Forty-four. Wow. Yeah. Fighting a kid called Patrick Haberora.

Good Belgian fighter. Yeah. It's interesting though. I mean, you've got to form a champ with all that experience. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's still in great shape. Yeah. He still can compete at a high level.

It's just, wow, these guys, when they're competing for that long, it's so nuts. Yeah. You know what I've, and I suggested as well as a thousand other things that I've suggested to the PFL, but a master's division. Right? You know the likes of Cowboy and Tony Ferguson? And, you know, the guys that you want to keep fighting, but you don't want to see them just get smashed by Chimai. Sure.

You know? Sure. I would love to see some of those fairly matched fies. You know, like when we had, it was Nate Diaz against Chameh, wasn't it? And then Chimayev was taken out the fight, and Tony Ferguson was put in the place and Nate won the fight. That, to me, was the perfect matchup. Like, the Chimayev one would have made me feel really uncomfortable to watch.

Yes. And I would love to see a master's division, Especially now we could accommodate it with some of the older fighters around. Because most of them, they just kind of bounce over onto, you know, bin, or whatever else is out there as options. Whereas, like, there's still got so much to offer. And if the fights are fairly matched, I think we get some more really, real good ones. Yeah, that it is a problem when you see those old veterans that still have something to offer,

and then you see them getting thrown in there with some 27-year-old assassin. And you're like, good Lord, don't do this. I mean, I'm, what, 43? I'd fight someone this weekend. And like, I love it. It's still in me. But I know I'm physically, like, I mean, even if I was at my athletic peak, I won't be competing with these guys now.

They're terrifying. But, you know, like, to know that I'm getting into a fight with someone that's as game as me. Right. But has also had the experience as well as the wear and tear. You know what I mean? Yeah. Evenly matched. Yeah.

Like, look at Pachiao's about to fight Mayweather. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Right. You know, like fighting Terrence Crawford, you'd be like, you don't do that. Exactly.

Yeah. Like, I don't want to say you get stretched. You know what I mean? But like you guys are both in your late 40s. Like, okay. Yeah. All right. I'll pay for that.

Yeah, it's as long as they're not gone. You know, there's some guys that they get to a certain point and they're like, why is their family letting them compete? Why hasn't anybody stepped in? Doesn't anybody recognize their skills are gone? Doesn't anybody recognize they get knocked out way too easily now? There's a bunch of fighters like that that I just really wish would not be doing it anymore. Yeah.

And the thing is that sad about it as well is, and this is where I feel like the community around MMA has probably changed in the last decade or two. Is like the old veteran fighters were just carried in such high regard, whereas now you're the highlight of somebody else's, the start of somebody else's career. Right. And a lot of the fans, I mean, certainly what I see online,

they're very dismissive of fighters that at one point were great and are now not quite where they used to be and they start throwing around words like washed and stuff I'm like you gotta respect where these guys came from like no one lives forever no one is their athletic peak forever but we also should still be celebrating what people have achieved you know and I feel like that's something that we're not

we don't get as much in the sport and that's partly because the young fighters get matched with the veterans to you know like you know bring Ken Shamrock back out of retirement and dust him off for Rich Franklin to fight him because no one knew who Rich was and he was so close to a title shot. Do you know what I mean? Like that was one of those moments where I'm like, that's kind of a, I don't like that fight. You know what I mean?

Because I can see what's being done there. Right. And, I mean, not that Chimae have needed it, but the boost that he would have got from smashing the hell out of Nate Diaz, you know, that was kind of part of the benefit of throwing Nate into that fight, you know. And they're the fights that I would like to not see anymore. Because I think we get more fights out of some of these guys towards the end of their career. Maybe their athleticism is not where it was,

but their knowledge is way ahead of where it used to be. We go back, you know, we were talking about the old days and when we first getting into it, and when MMA first became a thing, like me as a 17-year-old sitting, I wheeled the TV in with the VHS, and I put the tape in, and I watch UFC 2 and 3, and I had this feeling of, I'm like,

Like, now I'm questioning myself and everything about me as a martial artist. I have to do this. And if I don't do this, I'm going to be questioning myself my whole life. But at the same time, I'm looking at this going, well, I know one martial art really well, Taekwondo, and I know probably four or five other martial arts. All right, you know, Wing Chun, I'd done some traditional jiu-jitsu. I'd boxed quite a lot. You know what I mean?

So, like, I had a decent handle, but I also have a library of martial arts. arts books and I would sit in front of that library and think to myself like how am I going to consume all of this information and it wasn't like okay I need this bit of information and this and it wasn't a case of absorbing what is useful and rejecting what's useless I had to absorb everything in order to go through that shedding process and it just felt so overwhelming I remember going into fights feeling like I have no idea how this is going to play out like I don't I don't know half of this guy's skill set just purely because I haven't had the time to

learn all of this stuff. And it's like the more you pick at it, the more, you know, it's like, it's like you're hitting a rock and all of a sudden it falls in and it's a massive cave inside and it's just full of information. And I'm like, how am I going to consume all of this knowledge? You know what I mean? It was, I remember feeling very, very overwhelmed by it all. And that fed into a lot of anxiety during fight week, which was, you know, something that everybody always manages. But if I look back, that was where my anxiety came from. It was the, it was the over-analysis of the sport and the feeling like I was never going to be able to learn all of this information. Whereas now in actuality, I feel very, very opposite. I feel like now if I was going

back, my training would be very, very, very focused and very, very streamlined. But that's because I've had years and years of experience of watching the sport and knowing what works and what does and pulling things apart. You know what I mean? So it was almost like, and I said this, I've said this to a lot of young fighters. If I, if I in my career at one point could have stopped and taken six months out or a year out, just to be a student and just to learn and absorb, that would have been a real benefit for me. When I stopped fighting and I was doing commentary and work doing inside the octagon and stuff, like my knowledge was growing on a daily basis. I felt it. And I just, I thought to myself, man, I could have done this when I was in my career. But I didn't because I was

I was partly scared of the overanalysis of it, you know, and partly concerned that I was going to show myself so much that I didn't know that I was just going to feel like it was endless. It was a bottomless pit of knowledge. Right. You know? Whereas when I started doing Inside the Ottskin, and I was watching fights in chronological order from the beginnings of people's careers

all the way through, and then I was going back and I was watching prelims of fights that I wouldn't have watched in my career, because I only want to watch this guy and this guy because I don't want all of this. Sometimes I watch somebody and feel like I'm getting worse when I'm watching them, you know what I mean? So I'd be very, very specific about who I would watch.

Whereas in actuality, if you watch the whole card start to finish, the fight IQ increases generally as the card goes on. So the guys at the top make far less mistakes, and they're the guys that I'm watching. So I'm watching people that are way closer to flawless than I am. But if I watch the prelims, I can see the same mistakes that people are making. They're just making them far more regularly on the prelims. So it was almost like watching the prelims was uncovering problems and bad decisions

much quicker than it was when I was watching the few specific guys that I was trying to learn from. So there was a real benefit in just absorbing all of it. And then the next stage was, and it was specifically Robbie Lawler against Roy McDonald. It was the first time I realized I was watching a fight without putting myself. in the cage and and it was it was like an epiphany I was like oh I'm I'm just watching these two guys as a fan I'm not comparing Robby Lawler to me and Roy McDonnell to me and my process of preparing for an opponent was very similar to what I would do for an analysis I would get into him I would watch it

as much as I could have that person but then I would go back and watch my fights that I knew were available to them so I'm now I'm watching my fights with their skill set in mind right so now I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm almost pretending to be that person to watch me and go, okay, well, I can do this to him and I can do this to him. But there's always a bit of ego involved there. So like, say with Carlos Condit, an incredible fighter, right? He's great at everything, but he's not going to be able to take me down. And there's no way in hell he's going to be able to knock me out.

You know, Mohawk flapping in the wind, you know? And it was like, and that was my ego getting in the way. Right. Because if I was looking at Carlos Condit versus Robbie Lawler or Carlos Condit versus GSP, I would have respected his counterpunching, right? But my ego was a block in that scenario. So by watching two fighters and being able to remove myself entirely, I just saw things differently.

And it took my shit out of it. It took my drama out of the way. That's interesting. Your ego really can get in the way. And it really makes you make terrible decisions. Like how many people have taken fights they shouldn't have taken just because of their ego, their ego just gave them a distorted perception. Absolutely.

There was this guy that was training with us that was really good to. jujitsu and he had no striking and he was going to take an MMA fight and I remember saying to him you have to understand that like what you can do to people on the ground right you could you make a person feel helpless right someone could do that to you standing up and it's way scarier it's way scarier like you have no idea like you have no

you think it's this this weird Dunning Kruger effect right like you think you're really good so You think you're good at that? Like you've this distorted... You don't know anything about striking. Yeah. Like his striking was like, pap, pap, like rudimentary, like nothing.

I'm like, someone's going to set you up and boom! Right. And head kick you. They're going to... And he got TKOed. He got beat up badly. And I think it really fucked him up, too. Really? Yeah.

It's almost like you pull the curtain back and you realize there's a whole of the world behind the curtain that you're not anticipated was there. But the scariest world to not be good at is the striking world. Absolutely. That's the scariest world. And I've tried to quantify this myself because it is an interesting thing because often I find myself

I'm explaining the nuances of feints and movements that are opening doors for other things to land. I mean, I'd assign you as a master at this. Conor McGregor was a master at this. And the way that they deliver their techniques, there's such an elite level of intelligence to it that it's easy to just think that it's chance what they're doing, right?

Like take Conner, Gregor Cowboy, for example, right? And the beauty of Inside the Oktaker is I would download all the angles of the fight. I would watch every angle, the full fight from the whole angle. So I'd see different things. And there's a moment in that fight. And this is the benefit of, say, Connor McGregor, say his brand is the left hand, right? Connor McGregor's left hand brand was a very, very powerful weapon for him to take into the fight against Cowboy,

because Cowboy was so focused on it. and there's an angle from Cowboys back to against the fence and he sees Connor close his left hand and straight away Cowboy goes, left hand's coming and he moves onto the head kick. It was the threat of the left hand coming that forced Cowboy to make that mistake. Anderson's Silver, Vitor, Belfort

when he looked at his leg and kicked him in the face. The idea of him being able to sell, and you look at that fight, Vitor's checking the inside low kick while he's got Anderson's toes in his mouth. You know what I mean? It's like he was able to sell a technique purely with his eye line, purely with a feint. And Adasania is another master at it as well.

And that to me then shows that there are, we've got ranges in MMA. But in each one of those ranges, there's dimensions as well, right? These dimensions of understanding. Like you could be a button mashing fighter. And a lot people have success with button mashing. Right. They throw the technique that they worked in the changing room warming up on the pads. But then there are people that understand that each one of these techniques and each thing that they do or piece that they have in their arsenal is a setup for something else.

Right. You know? Well, that's what's interesting about people that have a real system. Yeah. Dwayne Bang Ludwig. Have you ever trained with him? I haven't. But we fought, didn't we? I mean, I was a huge fan of him back in the day.

I remember him Tika Irwin, somebody in King of the Cage up against the fence. Oh, yeah. And he did that in love with him. Yeah. That was a gig, Kinkie Sudo, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah, great system of footwork, though, isn't it? Oh, he has an amazing system.

And his system is like, he has a giant notebook filled with, like, techniques where everything, his system is like very well thought out. And it's really interesting because he didn't fight the way he teaches. No. That's what's really interesting. Like, T.J. Dillishaw is probably his greatest student. And T.J. fought completely different than Dwayne. He constantly switched stances, constantly.

He was like, he was giving you so many looks. And, you know, it's wild watching when, you know, you watch like Dwayne style versus what he would teach because it was just like, oh, if I had only known this while I was fighting. If I had only known this while I was coming up. If I had only known this early, early on in my career. Yeah. And this is where I don't think we get enough people crossing over to coaching afterwards. Like whenever I see former fighter in the corner, Mike Brown, Robbie Lawler, whoever it is. Like, I'm filled with confidence that the sport is moving on because they're going to pass on.

information that they've taken on from somebody else and refined, you know, like my Taekwondo teacher told me when I was a kid, if you're not better than me at my age, I've failed as a teacher. Right. And like, and he always, McRolee's name is, he always gave me everything. There was never any restriction because he wanted to see what I would do with it and where I would take it because then same with Eddie Bravo. Right.

We were just chatting about it backstage. Remember Sean Bollinger? Sure. He used to be able to heel hook himself. and he created the double bagger and there's a few different things. But I remember being on the mats and watching Eddie Bravo

listened to one of his 16, 17 year old students to see what he could learn from him. And that's such an unusual thing in a lot of martial arts schools is the teacher being a student, right? And that's something that always stood out to me about particular people. Like I would never want to train a fighter

and hold anything back from them because I always want to be just a little bit better. You know, I want to give you everything, and throw everything I've got on the table and then see what you pick up, see what you run with, and see what you can teach me from it. Yeah, it'll make you better too.

And that's the thing. Absolutely. But you have to have an honest ego. Yes. Like you have to be able to really say, okay, this is how good I am. I can't pretend I'm better than I am for these people. This is how good I am.

And you have to be able to show it. Yeah. And that's one of the beautiful things about Jiu-Jitsu. Like, you have to roll. Like, if you're a teacher, you're rolling with people. But if Eddie gets caught, something he'll tell people. Yeah. And he'll show you. Show me what you did. And everybody, look what he did. And he'll bring people around. He's like, he'll let you know. I'm just a human

being. I just happen to be really good at this. And even if I'm really good at this, there's openings. There's holes. There's things that I don't know. And this is a constantly changing and evolving game where people are bringing in new things. And some of these new things, you know, you analyze it. And you go, well, here's a simple way to stop this. And as soon as someone knows this, that submission's gone, and so then you kill it and you put it aside. Well, we tried that one. Didn't work. Sometimes you're like, try to stop this. And you're like, I don't, I think that's legit. And then guys would get down. They'll go, what if you do this? What if you do that? And you'll, like, he'll have classes. We'll have like 15 guys come up with different solutions to these problems and say,

okay, get him in it and put him in it. All right. Now, how do you finish it and you grab here? Okay. What would you do here? And then like you have guys like, break things down. And that's, that honest approach, someone told me that, remember when Hoist Gracie tapped Dan Severin with a triangle? They were training at one of the Gracie schools, a friend of mine, and he saw that and he said, can you show us that? He said, you're not ready for that yet. I can't show you that. And he's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, the guy, it's, it's a technique. Like, show me the technique. Like, he just did it. And he's like, no, we're not going to, like, they were holding back. Yeah. So in the

early days there was a lot of holding back you know this is like what was that what year was that that had to be like 94 or something like that but then you know but then like everyone's reputation as a coach back in those days couldn't really be questioned too much you know what I mean right because there was no way of them proving it I just I can't it's too deadly right you know what I mean whereas you know like like the people that's and those those people stand out in my mind you know Eddie was one of those people. He stood out in my mind because of how he approached the sessions. He was always a student even when he was the teacher.

Yeah. And the other thing as well, that, you know, everybody wanted to name something in the 10th Planet system. Right. You know, so everyone was trying to create something and make it stick. So, like, it created this really, like, it was a thriving environment to be in. I loved being at Legends back in the day and the other. And, you know, obviously, bomb squad as well before that. Yeah, what year did you start training with us?

It was legends. It was after the bomb squad had closed. I went back to the bomb squad. Well, what was the bomb squad to train with Paolo Torture of blood sport fame. Yeah. But, yeah, legends. And it just opened when I arrived there. So what year was that? 2005?

Six? Probably 2006, yeah. Wow. Yeah, because before that I've been training in American soccer team. Oh, that's crazy? I know. Two decades, man. That's when we met 20 fucking years ago.

Yeah, and a lot's changed. Nuts. Yeah. It's nuts, hot, Tom. just fucking waits for no one. I was just saying to the guys, the guys here. Like, it's funny, like the Joe Rogan experience. If you'd have asked me what the Joe Rogan experience was 20 years ago,

it was getting crushed inside control. That was my experience of Joe Rogan. Being on the mats during the class and watching you smash the bag with your back kick and then stepping onto the mats and just, and you almost had like the opposite game to most of the guys on the mat. Because all the 10th Planet guys were like pulling you into half guard or into guard and trying to wrap you up, whereas you were very much a top game player.

That's at least how it felt to me. It was like you were the different role on the mat to everybody else. Well, I got obsessed with head and arm chokes. Yeah, I felt it. You know, it fucked my neck up, I think. I wound up having a bulging disc in my neck. It was either that or not tapping the guillotines. But I got a head and armchow.

It developed it where it was like, if I locked it on, you were pretty much done. You know? And when I started tapping it, like brown belts and higher level guys with that. And then I just are really concentrated on it. And it's one of those things where it's like, you know how it is just like with a kick? Like everyone has strong legs, you know, you can lift weight through your legs.

But like how come some people can kick harder than other people? Well, it's the coordination, the technique, the refinement of it where it just, and there's something like that in a squeeze like Marcello. Like Marcello would get your back and his rear naked choke. Marcelo Garcia was just like a master. He's not a big, strong guy. So what is it? And so that was like my number one go-to was the head and arm choke.

If I could get that shit, I was pretty sure I could lock it up. So I just developed this style of just crushing where I would just have my whole body would just lock on something like a pit bull. Yeah. Yeah. But that's interesting the difference between striking and grappling and going back to what we're talking about a minute ago. Like there's something mechanical about grappling, right? If you pull on somebody's head, the head's going to come down or they're going to force back and the head's going to go back. There's a cause and reaction in grappling almost all the time that even a person that doesn't fight can see the basics of.

Yes. Well, if I pick one leg up and I throw you around, you're going to lose your balance. Right. Even something as simple as that. But with striking, there's so many things that happen with striking where no one touches anybody, right? Especially when you've got, and this is where the dimensions come in. You know, you've got the button mashes at the bottom. You've got the guys that have refined their button mashing skill sets and now they've got two or three combos that work well for them or they've got a particular technique that they refine to a point where they can deliver it in ten different ways.

But then you've got people that understand that each one of their weapons is a different thing at a different time and so is a different purpose at a different time, you know? Yeah. Like with a jab for example. Everybody in their game has got a jab. But if you strip that jab down into its core components and you go, you know, you look at like a, a, you look at like a, a, you know, you look at like a, a, you know, you know, you look at a, you know, you know, you know, you, you know, you look at a. like a secondary identifier, right, of that technique, there are going to be differences, right? If I throw my right hand straight and I throw it over your jab

or I throw it when I split your cross, that to me is three different techniques, right? It's the same weapon that you're using, but the delivery system's different. Right. Right. But then on top of that complexity, you've got all of the damage that you can inflict

that draws responses to people, right? Like the calf kick. Now you can faint a car. a calf kick and get someone to pick their leg up. That's a very, very basic example. Or when someone's been hit with a body shot, you faint a body shot and their heads almost always open. There are certain things, I mean, headshot dead is another good example.

How often do you see someone throw a punch followed by a kick and knock their opponents out? Duke Rufus used to teach that. Is that right? Yeah, he taught me that. That was his thing. He really liked the shield, the vision with a punch and have the kick come behind it. See, that for me is,

That's one delivery mechanism of one particular technique. Right? And there are lots and lots of those. Lots of them. Lots of them. But that's where I find it really interesting is and how, how, I sat one day and I thought to myself, I'm going to now down the jab. I'm going to start with that because I have intended on writing a book or two about this

at some point. And I started with the jab and I got to like 20,000 words. And I thought to myself, no one's going to read this shit. Like, I'm going to sell one copy and it's going to me to myself so I can criticize it. Do you know what I mean? So it's like, well, you've always been a very thorough guy in the way you analyze things, which makes you a perfect candidate for someone who's a commentator. Because you really have a very complex understanding of the mechanics of movement and of all the different things that are happening. You're not just like, you know, oh, we hit them hard.

You're looking at all the different layers and you're you analyze things on multi-levels, which I always find fascinating. Like you have a great commentary style. It's really excellent. You're absolutely one of the best out there. That means a lot to me. Thank you. Yeah, you're great. I'm fortunate enough to have a bit of the tism, you see.

So it's like I see the patterns. That's a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. Touch of the tism is good. Oh my God. Yeah. I don't think I have that. No?

I don't know. I have ADHD for sure. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah. My dad's ADHD. My mom's tism for sure. You know what I mean? We're a bit of both. I don't have the tism, but I have this weird ability to lock in on

things where the world goes away and I don't need food. Yeah. I can just, I could do something for like 12 hours in a row. 100%. I forget to eat all the time. Yeah. In fact, Tom Hardy's just announced that he's, he's autistic. He's just collaborated with the brand and they've, they've created a whole line of, you know,

no eye contact rash guards and stuff. How convenient. He's autistic. Come on. You know what was really interesting, right? There's so many people that are claiming autistic, like, unless you're coding in your sleep, shut the fuck up. You know what was really interesting is.

I have a friend called Scroobius. Pip, he's a rapper in the UK, you know, Scroobius, yeah. So he was in, he was in Taboo with Tom Hardy. And he told me a story when they were driving from L.A. to Vegas. And Scroobius Pip, his, his record labels called Speech Development Records, he has a stammer. He has a speech impediment. And on this drive between L.A. and Vegas, he's driving. Tom Harder's in the passenger seat. And Tom started to mimic his stammer, but apologize for it. He's like, I can't help it. like he's absorbing parts of his character why he's sitting there. Very similar to like it happened with Johnny Depp and Bill Murray when they played Hunter Thompson right?

Like you watch Jack Sparrow and Jack Sparrow's got a Hunter Thompson kind of move to him. And even Johnny Depp said himself he don't think he was ever the same after he played Hunter Thompson in Fair and Loathing. Well he was such a giant Hunter Thompson fan. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting about like certainly method actors. People that can play a role. Like Jim Carrey is another good example, Christian Bail, right?

Daniel Day Lewis, oh my goodness, maybe the best. Like their ability to up to almost like Shang Sung out of Mortal Kombat, they can absorb a bit of the person's character and then kind of become that character. Yeah. I met Tom a couple of times at Hanzos in New York. And he's, I mean, he's a lovely guy, but he's like kind of hunched over no eye contact and, you know. Oh, he is? Well, I think a little bit of that is fame as well.

I think so. There's a little bit of fame that just weirds you out. Like if I go places, I try not to make eye contact sometimes because it's just too odd. I just like, hi. Like you might think I'm autistic, but I'm just fucking weird it out by too many people. I totally get that. You know, one of my favorite shows that you ever did was with Henry Rollins, the first one. And he said something that always stuck in my mind.

He said, I'm very good being the party. I'm not very good being at the party. Yeah. Stuck in my mind. I feel like that all the time. But I go the opposite way. I realize recently I hold too much eye contact. And I find it exhausting.

I was walking through the park next to the hotel last night. And I'm like having a conversation in my head. Like, stop looking at people. Stop looking people in the eyes. Stop making eye contact. I do all the time. I lock in. But I'm even doing it now.

Like we're talking. I'm kind of locked in to you. And I, even in your conversation, you like have a look away. I struggle to do that. I'm actually trying to consciously do it less. I have to sometimes if I'm thinking of an idea. Yeah, I look away. My wife said that I wonder if that's autism.

Because it's like one of my daughters has my recall, my ability to like, she'll talk about like, you know, whatever it is. Like she can rattle off like information about the Titanic. Like it's like, you have your fucking dad's brain. Like that's nuts. But I do, when I do it, I look away sometimes. Like I look up. Like I'm talking about things. So I really want to be clear about what I'm saying.

I look up. And it's because I want to, I think it's because I want to take out the element of eye to eye and communicating with someone. Looking away while thinking, known as gaze aversion, a common cognitive behavior that helps people process information by reducing external distractions. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. By looking at an empty space or upward, the brain shifts from environmental input to internal cognitive tasks, such as memory retrieval or complex thinking. Yeah, that's what I do. I don't even know it was a similar like when people turned on the radio when you're trying to find where you're going

You know oh yeah, you have to like lock you whatever it is right still see but you have to like you know Oh right or someone's yapping at you where you're trying to figure out where you go on and they're telling you and I tell her and they're like we shut the fuck up I don't know where I am yeah we have to figure out where we're going you know I find myself doing it when I'm walking through airports when I'm traveling I've got my wife with me Veronica like I notice I constantly don't make eye contact with her when we're traveling and I don't know why that is It's like I feel a little bit like there's enough to be dealing with right now. If I then open a conversation with you by looking at you, that's another layer of, Yes. Let me just deal with the airport. Yes.

Well, you know, people don't think about that, but when you're involved in multiple tasks at the same time, you know, you're taking away your ability to concentrate and do a great job at any one of those things. If there's multiple things going on at the same time. That's why, like, I used to do interviews in my car and I stopped doing them because I sound like a moron. And I realize this because I'm thinking, about cars. Right. I'm going 60 miles an hour. This is a car to the left. It's a car to the right. It's a car in front of me. Car behind. This guy, this fucking asshole. Oh, this guy in a motorcycle. He's going to get killed. We'll get him zipping in between the lights. And so I'm thinking all these different things. And then I'm trying to explain different stuff. I thought it would be a great way to multitask. Let me do this fucking stupid interview that I don't want to do anyway. And let me do it while I'm on the phone. It'd be kind of fun. Yeah. But meanwhile, I just sound like a moron. Because I can't articulate. well because I'm thinking about too many different things simultaneously. Well, you're already multitasking.

Yeah, which is why I like the sensory deprivation tanks so much. Yes, yes. There's none, there's nothing. There's no tasks. Is that still a regular thing for you? I got it right here. Have you really? Yeah.

Got it right here. Where are you living these days? I'm in the UK. I'm right in the Midlands in the UK. But I mean, only- Getting a little kooky over there, isn't it? Yes. You might want to bail before they lock you up for thought crime.

I know, right. I know. For real, it's like I'm conscious, I'm conscious and cautious and cautious all. the time. I feel right now like I'm kind of, I'm holding my tongue on a lot of things, just purely because I kind of, I know that when I start talking, I'm just, ah, you know, because that's how I am. You know, I'm very opinionated, unfortunately. That's a good thing. Well, if I decide to start talking, then I won't, I won't shut up and I'm not, I'm not open that floodgate yet, but I do feel like it's coming. But I also feel like I need to, I need to feel like I, I need to prepare for it a little

bit you know what I mean like there's a bunch of books I need to consume before I'm I'm in the right place where I can open up and fully express yourself about certain things yeah it's just where it's going right now is not in a good direction it's going it's tightening down on people's ability to express themselves yeah and you've got so many issues it's happening everywhere though isn't I mean even like you know like I mean as a as a comedian you know freedom of speech is so important to you and to your industry, you know what I mean? And I feel like that's changed a lot. You know, across the world, it's the same in Europe as well in a lot of places. I think in America, in comedy, it was closing down and then people realize we can't have

this and it's opened right back up. Right. Okay. You know, there was a bunch of people that were trying to conflate jokes with your actual opinions. Yeah. You know, I talked about on stage once. I'm like, you know, Bob Marley didn't really shoot the sheriff, you know. It's just when Quentin Tarantino's filming a film. No, he's dying. Okay. This is entertainment. And you say things that you don't really believe because it's an outrageous thing to say because

it's funny. And there's this understanding of that as an audience member. You're supposed to be able to accept that. But then you have these cunts out there in the world that are just looking to find words that someone said and ascribe them as if they're, you know, put it down on paper as if this is a statement. Like this is what this person actually thinks. beliefs. Like, no, that's not

what we're fucking around. We're talking shit. Like, you can't pretend. Yeah. And then take a small clip and put it completely out of context on TikTok or something like that. All the time. Yeah. All the time about all kinds of things. People, which is part of the game. You know, people love to do that. It's like, it's fine. It's okay.

You know, it's fine for TikTok-minded people. The real problem is people that don't know you and don't understand you and then they get an impression of you based off of that. This is their first introduction to you and it's based off well the fuck that guy but you know that's just part of the game

yeah it's gonna happen I think comedians and satire is one of the last lines of defense against tyranny I really do like I watch Prime Minister's questions every Wednesday and I listen to just the nonsense that comes out of it and we've got Keir Stama and

Kemi Badenock just going at each other over just nonsense it's it's not nothing real no real no real quality of conversation is coming out of that but what I feel like is if we had a panel of comedians sitting in the gallery

somewhere you know you've got a Robert Mitchell and Ricky Jivace and James A. Caster and a few others just sitting there just going well that sounds like nonsense and then poking fun at it and making a joke out of it it brings a reality to things that I don't think I think we're lacking in a lot of ways well the Lakota had that in their tribes they had a thing called the Hayoka which they called a sacred clown and the Hioka would be able to make fun of everything and as soon as you could couldn't make fun of something, you knew it was bullshit. So it's like you couldn't make fun of the chief's wife

or you couldn't make fun of, you know, someone, some warrior, couldn't make fun of something. As soon as you couldn't make fun of something, like, hey, why he's so defensive? How come I can't make fun of that? That's interesting. Yeah. What's it called? It had to actually be funny.

Heyoka. Heyoka. It had to actually be funny, of course, or you'd probably get killed. That's your new move. That's your new move, Joe. You need to set up by Heoca for the world. Well, I think that's what comedy is in, in many ways. It's a test. You test things. It doesn't mean it always works and it doesn't mean

that jokes are always funny and it doesn't mean that sometimes people don't overreach. You know, Patrice O'Neill had a great statement about that where he was talking about something that happened on the Opie and Anthony show and he was on Fox News and they were criticizing it and he was saying, you got to understand that all jokes come from the same place. They all come from the place of trying to be funny. And some of them you might find offensive and some of them you might laugh at really hard. But the mindset, the place that it's coming from

is all the same. And I was like, that's so wise because that's really the best way to describe it because that's really what everyone's trying to do. They're just trying to make people laugh. It's just sometimes it doesn't come out right or sometimes it's a miss, like especially if it's an ad lib.

Like at any moment in time, you generally don't know what the next word out of your mouth is going to be like, now, right? I don't know. I'm just freeballing. And sometimes you'll say something really hilarious. And sometimes you say something, you're like, cut that out, Jamie. You know, it's because like you try, you swing, you miss, you know, you don't know. And people want to take these things that you're freeballing with and just trying to make laughs and call them a statement. And think that it's like

this well thought out, you know, like you sat down, you wrote this. out, you went over it with a fine tooth comb, this is my press release. Like, that's not what comedy is. It's jokes. You're just fucking around. And if you can't take a joke, you're probably annoying. And you really shouldn't be in any position to regulate discourse because you're not a fun person, right?

You're a person that's looking to take things very seriously. Yeah. We know a lot of people like that that are bad faith actors and, you know, they play gotcha. You just said this. Like, you really mean that? So your position on that? Like, oh, fuck off. Yeah.

Like, you're not, I'm not interested in engaging with you because you're not real. You know, like, this is not a real thing. You're playing a stupid game. I'm playing a game of we're two human beings communicating with each other, and we're going to overstep sometimes. We're going to slip up. We're going to, and every now and then, you're going to nail it, knock it out of the park. And even if I don't like you, if you fucking make me laugh, I'll clap.

Yeah. You know? It's kind of similar with trash talking, isn't it? You know what I mean? And if somebody, like, one of the funniest lines. ever was, and I remember Connor, as he was saying it, he was laughing it himself, and it was the back and forth with Chad Mendez. And he was, Chad was saying, you can't wrestle and Connor, he was on a live feed at BT

Sports Studio, and I remember it so clearly. Because he was, like, as he was saying it, he was finding it funny in himself. He was like, I'll wrestle my balls on your forehead. And it was just, and then he's laughing and everybody in the room's laughing. Even Chad Mendez's laughing, you know what I mean? But then like, funny, dude. He was very funny. He was very funny.

He was very funny. Who the fuck is that guy? And that's become a part of MMA law, right? It's amazing how he's influenced. Oh, he was the master shit talker. And also the master at emotional warfare. Yes. Like the Jose Aldo fight, I remember being there for that fight going Aldo is out of sorts.

Yes. His whole, he looked fucked up. His body looked smooth. He didn't look like he wanted to be there. And he just threw himself at Connor and got cracked. Wasn't it crazy. He was so emotionally torn and like the moment was so big. And then Connor across the other side looks so relaxed and loose because he knew he had won the emotional warfare.

The emotional warfare was won. And that is a giant factor in fights, whether or not someone bites on emotional warfare. And I think that's a giant factor this weekend. I watched your war room. By the way, I love your YouTube show. It's really excellent. Thank you. And this fight this weekend is a lot of emotional warfare, right?

Strickland has said some wild shit about Hamzot. He would say, shoot him, he calls him a goat fuckers. I mean, but it's interesting to me that it doesn't seem like Hamzaon is biting on any other. He's like, this guy, he said this thing, but he doesn't believe it. Yeah. And he's like, whoa. Like, he doesn't seem upset about it. it doesn't seem like it's under his skin he's like this guy he says he wants war but i don't think

he wants war he'd be dead that's it that's how it should be i mean strickland would be the same i don't think you could say anything to strickland that would offend him he's just he'll laugh yeah exactly yeah he'll like say like when i had that fight against marcus davis coming up like i was surprised at how angry he got at me like in the countdown show i'm like i'm laughing i'm like i can't I literally can't believe he's this het up and wound up about it. You know? And like, you go back to the Conner thing. You remember the press conference where he stole Aldo's belt?

The last one they did in Ireland. So I was behind the stage for that one to start with when they were both being kept separate. And Dana was there. And then when they went on stage, I was on Conner's side of the stage at the bottom of the stairs. And the anger just emanating off Aldo the whole day was exhausting for me just to be around. And then after the press conference where Connor had taken his belt, as soon as they circle back and they were behind the thing again, Aldo was like beside himself angry.

And as soon as I saw that, I'm like, wow, that is, that's like a level of witchcraft that you see in like the fainting of striking. And when you can start to pull somebody's emotions out like that. Yeah. And like for me, I think fighters should be completely impenetrable. Like no one should be able to say anything to a fighter. to upset them. Right.

It's an immediate weakness that you throw on the table for someone to get their teeth into. Well, it's one of the things that I really appreciate about Pereira, his stoicism. He's always just stoic. You could talk all that mad shit about him, you know, and like the Ancolaev, the rematch with Anclyev. Like Ancolaev had talked so much shit after that first fight. Yeah. You know, and then when he blasted him out in the first round, then he went like this.

Beautiful. You know? The same thing with Jemmer. Mall Hill. Yeah. You know, I mean, he's very stoic, but afterwards his celebration is even like, look. Look. It's so cool. I like the fact that his coldness is a part of his brand. Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah, he's very cold. That's stare down. Yeah. Like him and Yuri Prohasa. It's so disturbing that Yuri thought he was using spiritual warfare. Like Yuri accused him of using sorcery. He's like, no magic this time. Yeah

You're so crazy Such a crazy request Yeah Like do not invoke spirits I had someone trying to get a witch doctor on me in Brazil once Really? They thought I was casting spells Yeah

They tried to get a witch doctor Yeah Casting spells Because if you believe it It'll work Right if you really That's why voodoo works Right

Because if you believe in voodoo It will fuck you up But someone says I'll curse you You're like Oh no I'm fucking curse shit If you really believe that, it will work.

Yeah. If you can make someone afraid of something or sensitive to something. And I was always a big fan of Marcus Davis, and I knew how dangerous he was in the division. But I also knew that if I poked him enough in the right direction, I would get a particular version of him that suited me. Right? And there were two versions of Marcus, right?

There was the Marcus that showed up and he was like stacked, looked like the Hulk. and you're like, okay, he's going to grapple. Or there was the Marcus that was a little bit slender, and he just looked different. And that version of Marcus Davis was knocking everybody out. That's when he's coming into box. And I knew that if I pushed him enough,

because it was easier for me to deal with the heavily muscled grappler version of Marcus Davis than the slick Southpour boxer version. So my thought was if I can push him to be really, really angry at me, he's not going to want to roll the dice on striking games. He's going to want to edge his bets and try. and force the fight into the range that I'm not very good at. So there was a purpose to it. But as soon as he bit on it, I was like, that was too easy.

That was too easy. And like there was clips of him training. He's like the nose is bleeding and he just looks. And then that's when I'm for the way-ins, I hate Dan Hardy T-shirts. Because we did a like a 10-minute countdown show for it. And I was training at Wild Card at the time just to try and get inside his head. You know, I'm training a boxing gym. You know, I'm expecting you to be a box.

and I played the game really hard on that fight. And it was interesting to see how it played out because of what he expected from me and the version of him that I got, right? And he was so angry at me that his vision was, his mind was clouded. And even in the, was it the end of the second round, he went back and sat on his stool,

and it always stuck in my mind, Mark Delagrotti in his corner. It wasn't advice, it wasn't anything. He said, you're one round, away from shutting this kid up. It was all about silencing me, putting me in my place. Interesting. You know?

And then funnily enough, after that, the next fight was Mike Swick. And for the whole training camp, Mike Swick was like, he was waiting for me to start trash talking. So I'm like, I'm not going to do it because he's expecting it. And he'll find it funny. So it's not going to have any kind of impact. So I just waited until the press conference and brought him a runner-up trophy. And he was like, I'm bringing this to the cage. on fight night and I'm going to give it back to you, but you know.

But it's interesting to see what you can do, how you can affect people like that and make them act out, you know. Like the countdown show, the very start of it, it's just hilarious still in my mind, is you've got this whole kind of, it's like dimly lit and Marcus is there. And he's like, you know, when I was a kid, my mom used to say, you can't say you hate this unless you think a little bit about how much you dislike it every day.

and then there was a pause and the UFC nailed it with the editing and he looked down the camera and he went, I hate Dan Hardy and then it cut to me and I'm just laughing like a prick. I'm like ha! You know, and I totally

got so much hate mail for that fight I can't even tell you. I think I've still got a folder in my old email account because I saved it all. That's funny. I got death threats. I got all kinds of stuff.

Of course. People hated me from that fight. But like as soon as I thought you know, I'm going to make I hate Dan Hardy T-Hardy T-shirt surely to kind of like bring some light to this. I even made one for Marcus and he threw it back at me. But it was just like I wanted a particular version of him, you know,

just like what Connor did with Aldo. He primed Aldo to run onto that counter left. And Aldo, a clear mind training from a blank slate, not having any of that psychological warfare in mind. Would never charge like that. It would have been so much more dangerous for Connor. Right. And Connor was always heavy on the front leg.

And Aldo was one of the best. best leg kickers ever. You know, he probably would have tried to kick the legs and piece him apart from the outside and find his motions. But Connor was always going to be a problem for Aldo because he's so fast and he's so explosive and so big. Yeah. He was so big for 45.

His weight cut was hell. Watching him weigh in and that was the days where you would actually weigh in. This is before the ceremonial weigh in. So he would have to make 1.45 and then stand there and he looked like a dead man. He looked like someone from like fucking walking dead. It was weird. And then he would just rehydrate. And the next day, he had to be a buck 65 when he actually fought.

Easy. Easy. I like what they've done with the weight cutting. I like the fact that it's done in the morning and people can rehydrate and stuff. The thing I miss is to see people facing off when they're in that feral dehydrated state. Right. That's the thing I miss because like a lot of the time I'll be looking for reeds. You know, there's the picture of you kind of looking around.

You know what I mean? It's like you want to see that face off on where people are in that state. What's one of my favorite things to do? See the guys head to head, looking at each other's eyes. Because you just, there's a fucking smell. Yeah.

There's a feeling in the air. You get a sense. I wear the meta glasses when I'm doing faceoffs now. So you can see, P.F. I've made a little logo, Hardy's, hardy vision. Nice. And you can see, and sometimes people are like, face to face you.

It's palpable. You know, and what I always loved when people were cutting weight is you've got a far more genuine version of them than the version that was... I mean, even look at Connor, right? He was feral at 1.45, he was cut him, but he was on point. At 170, he was like... Right. Feel great. Just a different, three different versions of the same person, 10 pounds apart.

Yeah. And when I fought Rory Markham, that was co-main event in my second fight in London, UFC 95, he arrived at Fight Week on. the Tuesday at 195 to make 171 and I knew that it was going to be a rough weight cut for it. He was a big guy. He was massive and he'd never been the distance. 16 and 4 he was knocked everybody out that he fought and I was, do you remember when he thought was it Brody

Farber kicked him in the neck and like as he went down he like crossed his legs on the way down. That was at the palms and it was just dead at him. It was brutal. But like when we were, we did the weigh-ins in a theatre in London and obviously we're all on our on weight. I've been

on wait since two o'clock as most people have. We've journeyed into London on the bus. Everyone's still on weight. No one's drinking. And like you walk through the changing rooms in the back and we're in like an old West End theatre. And like you can see where people are at, what state they're at, how much they've cut weight.

And I remember seeing Roy Markham just sitting there just, he would just look like he was broken already. He was just so drained and exhausted. So my thought to myself is I'm going to get right in his face as soon as I've stepped off the scales. And I wanted him to feel that I wasn't as depleted as he was the day before, because that would then be his memory going into the fight on fight days,

that he didn't cut as much as me. He didn't feel like shit like I did yesterday. Right. And, like, as I walked onto the stage, I'm standing on the scales and I'm looking at him. And there's never a photograph of me looking at the crowd and flexing. I'm looking directly at him. And as soon as they read my weight,

I went straighter, I'll put my forehead on his, and I tried to push him back a step or two. And that was because we were on weight. If that was a morning weigh in and we were doing it later in the day, it wouldn't have had the same kind of impact. He would have already been replenished. He would have felt much better. Yeah.

No, it's a good point. He would have pushed. That's why I always wore contact lenses as well. I always had the contact lenses on the stage. I just didn't want people to see my eyes. I didn't want them to get a real version of me until fight night. Yeah. Yeah, emotional warfare.

It's real. It's very important. I loved it. I mean, I wasn't very good as a fighter, you see, so I had to lean up what I can. Look at the guys in my division, though. I mean, John Fitch. I know. Mike Swick was great.

Josh Koshchek, a bit of a prick, but great fighter. You know what I mean? Like, you're good guys in my division at the time. And, man, I didn't have the wrestling to be competing with a lot of those guys. That's a giant factor. And that's a factor that takes so long to catch up to. Yeah. God, if you can ever, unless you're like a real superior athlete, just a freak athlete.

It's just like someone who's got a gymnastics background or something. Yeah. He was like very explosive. It's so hard to pick up that wrestling later in your career. It's like that's what's so crazy about Pereira is that he figured out how to just stuff everything. Like from a multiple champion kickboxing career where he didn't do any grappling at all. Lost his first MMA fight to submission. Really couldn't fucking grapple at all.

Gets together with Glover Tashira and just figured it out. But I also think with him it's a freak athlete thing. For sure. Because there's the same reason why he hit so hard. I think he's just weirdly built. But even a freak athlete, though, you take him back 10 years and you take Glover to Chera away. And he's not supplied with the information where he can apply that athleticism, right?

And this is where former fighters passing our knowledge like we talked about. I mean, look, we went Bass Rutan, Dwayne Ludwig, T.J. Dillershaw, right? Right. You know, like Glover to Shearer to Alex Pereira is probably one of the best relationships. because for me, Glover Tashira was he overachieved in his career based on his age and his athleticism compared to other people in the division. The reason why was because his game was so solid and so sound. I say to young fighters, you need that Glover to share a base level

where you can be semi-conscious, taking big shots, sweep to top position, take someone's back and choke him out. Like he did that consistently if you get dropped and come back from the dead and finish people. And Glover also missed six years of his prime. Crazy. Because you couldn't get out of Brazil. Well, you were talking about him constantly before he was signed. I remember that.

I remember hearing his name a lot because you were, same with Pereira. You know, you were talking about him before the UFC signed him. But like if you'd imagine Glover to share, sorry, Alex Pereo walked into an MMA gym in 2005, they would have probably tried to teach him a whole system of jiu-jitsu. And then he would have had a wrestling coach that would have tried to teach him folk style or freestyle wrestling. Whereas Glover to share is like, there's a lot of this shit you don't need, brother. Like, first of all, I'm not going to teach him any submissions because you're not really going to need them. But he does no submissions?

He's a jiu-jitsu black belt. But that's the thing. He's like, does he know the whole database of jiu-jitsu? Does he know everything that a normal black belt would learn? And I'm not discrediting his black belt. But what I'm saying is his game has been very specifically tailored to be effective in the arena that he's fighting in. That's true. But it's also the relationship that he has with Glover, too, where it's a,

one really elite coach with the world championship level experience concentrating on a very special athlete. Whereas if you're at ATT, you know, you're this fucking Chechens and fucking Dagestanis and just a room full of assassins and there's five coaches and like I don't know if you'd get that kind of attention there. You know, there's two different schools of thought. You know, there's the school of thought that you need to be around those people because that's a shark tank and that's how you get better. You'd be around all these killers. And then there's another school thought is like, no, you're better off at a very small gym with a small group of people that really concentrate on you. I'm more inclined to think of the small gym. I think the small gym with

elite trainers is a better option than being in a giant. I mean, it's not that ATT doesn't create amazing world champion athletes. It certainly does. But I think if someone's coming up, maybe you're better off with someone, like, first of all, you'd have to find someone like Glover who's really interested in taking the time and really working with you. Yeah. And Glover, and, you know, going back to what we're talking about earlier, like Glover's already gone through the process of learning Jiu-Jitsu and absorbing what's useful and rejecting a lot of what's useless.

Yes. So he's not giving Pereira the useless part of Jiu-Jitsu for MMA. Right. Right. Now, how much of Jiu-Jitsu specifically is applied to MMA, right? There are so many positions that it just changes when you start to use punches. things become a lot easier when you can start to strike as well because you can force people to do things they don't want to do

right? Yep, yep. So, like, I feel like the refinement that Glover Tashira went through to be the great fighter that he was is the reason why Pereira has become so successful because he's been given the pieces that he needs. And I would imagine that, you know, if you rolled with him, he would be a real problem, but I would imagine his game's still very direct.

Like, he's not using crackhead control and he's not rolling for knee bars and that kind of thing. I just, because the... But neither's Hodger Gracie. Of course. You know what I mean? But he's also gone through the shedding process, right? Yes.

Well, I don't think he ever really acquired all the crazy shit. I think there's a lot of these guys that like fundamentals are just like laser focus. Like Hickson. Hickson was always just laser focus fundamentals. Minotaro Nogera, laser focus fundamentals. Do you think the, do you think the existence of Valitudo kind of forced them to go? very specifically to what worked though for no rules contests probably there's probably some of that because obviously hickson created and competed in valetudo very early on so it's like yeah yeah uh i mean

a lot of stuff goes out the window as soon as you punch yeah right a lot of stuff absolutely yeah but including some heel hooks and things like that like there's certain positions where you see guys in jiu jiu jitsu tournaments like boy you find yourself like that in a fight that guy's got all blast you in the face. Like you're in a bad, like you're grabbing a hold of someone's leg and your head is right here and you're hooked like, there is nothing stopping someone from elbowing you or punching you in the face. It's kind of nuts to even pursue those.

But as long as there's no striking, boy, it's very effective. Yeah. See, this, I often think that I'm quite, I feel very fortunate that I came into martial arts before MMA. And the reason for that is because the way that I learned martial arts was not for sport, right? And this was an observation I've had recently where, you know, a fighter just would fall apart if they don't have a particular person in their corner, right? My martial arts instructor back in the day from when I was six was teaching me tequando or teaching me martial art, should I say, for him not to be their cornering me because I'm doing it for self-defense. There's no sport context.

He's not teaching me techniques that I can use when he's there to coach me through a street fight, right? He's trying to give me the techniques that I need. so when he's not there, I know what I'm doing. Yeah. Right? Same thing with like spatial awareness. Like often, like, you know, when I was in clubs and I was fighting a lot back in the day, my awareness of fire exits and tables and that kind of stuff,

it gives me, it gave me a similar awareness to how I can use the cage against my opponent, which I feel is not necessarily used as much as it could be in MMA these days. Like there are certain fighters, they just don't, like, how often do you see two fighters up against a fence panel and the whole cage is? there and they're like they're not no one's using the pressure that they could be using sometimes people circle themselves onto the fence unnecessarily

but the idea of being backed up against the wall is only if you don't want people attacking you from behind was my perspective in a self-defense context so I think the way that I learned martial arts allowed me to kind of see it as a in a more

efficient way right like say for example if I'd have learned jujitsu I wouldn't have wanted to use jujitsu for a street fight because a lot of the street fights I got in it wasn't one person. Right. So I don't want to be inside control or choking somebody out while these friends volleying me in the head. Like for me it was the efficiency of, okay, here's a guy, here's a guy, you know what I mean? Right.

Like how quickly can I get through these people? Yeah. You know, and I feel like that's something that this is maybe where the scoring criteria can be adjusted so we keep getting what we want out of the sport because there are stagnant fires. They do slow down. people do start to think, okay, this round, this round, this round, this round, and there's not an instigation for a conclusion built into their game necessarily. But isn't that also dependent upon matchups? Like sometimes people just cancel each other out skill-wise, and that's just part of the game.

Absolutely, but usually the ones where they cancel each other out skill-wise are they actually the more interesting fights? Because whether it's grappling or striking, it keeps moving. almost always it's when there's a dominant skill set on one side and the other person just can't deal with it. Like, look at me against J.RICUS. Exactly. Me against GSP. Right.

Like, I didn't have the skill set to compete with him. Right. If I'd have been able to wrestle, I'd have forced him to strike. If I'd have been better at Jiu-Jitsu, I'd have maybe forced him to strike a bit more. Right. But because there was a way of him completely taking me out my game, there wasn't necessarily an onus to instigate a conclusion to the fight. Right.

So almost always when you see one person that is so dominant in wrestling and the other person can't handle it, that's when the fights can sometimes be quite stagnant. And my argument in those scenarios is, okay, well, yeah, you're winning this with wrestling. You're winning it with wrestling. But you're not concluding it, right? Like, you're going to get to the end and the judges are going to go, well, yeah, you, you know, you controlled him for more of the fight. Like the Hamza Drick as well. Yeah.

Like this is, I mean, I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this. I think we should stop scoring controlling MM. right? Control is scored up against the fence, right? Defense is not scored in MMA, right? Defense is its own reward, right? Control, in my opinion, is its own reward. If you're a grappler and I'm a striker, it's on you to take me into the range that suits you. Right, but if someone's taking someone down and controlling them and working towards a submission, how do you quantify that?

Well, they're working towards a submission. They might not get it, but they're working towards it. So then if you consider top control as you would center control, right? When everything else is even, you go to octagon control as one of the latest scoring criteria, when the striking and the grappling, everything's even. Then we move into, okay, well. Octagon control is weird, though, because it's like, so octagon control could be you're in the center of the cage and you're pressing the action. But what if you're a counterstriker?

Like, what if you're Tyron Woodley versus Stephen Wonderboy Thompson? And you spend a lot of the time just moving away. Like, remember, they fought to a draw, right? Didn't they fight to a draw in one of their fights? Yeah. But that was also, I mean, and I don't necessarily want to criticize Tyron, but I don't really think Tyran liked fighting. He spent a lot of time wearing his back heel down against the fence

with the crowd booing in the championship rounds. I never got the impression that Tyran liked fighting. He was just good at it. You know? That's interesting. I don't know why he would think that. I thought that was the style to beat Wonderboy. I think that's the smart style to beat Wonderboy.

I think that's the smart style to beat Wonder Boy because he didn't fight that style with Darren Till. Yeah, absolutely. He blasted him, took him down and got rid of him quick. For sure. But with Wonderboy, you cannot stand in the middle of the cage and kickbox that guy because he's doing weird shit. He's doing things with his legs.

You can't do. And you know, like, if you see a guy like Raymond Daniels or MVP, you can't. You can't, yeah. So wrestle him. Yeah, if you can. I hear what you're saying totally. But like, say, for example, in the Damien Meyer fight, he defended 26 takedowns in that fight,

when the distance, right? Right. But with the Wonderboy fight, he rocked Wonderboy, and he had Wonderboy hurt, where Wonderboy didn't hurt him, which is because he forced Wonderboy to be offensive instead of countering. So by making it boring, by backing up. Yeah, but at the same time, I don't necessarily think, I don't know as that was a calculation of going on. I think it was. You think?

Yes, because he fought him that way the second time as well. I think... But I think that was intimidation from what Wonderboy could do on the feet and him not wanting to waste energy trying to take him down. I don't think he was intimidated. I think he was waiting. He was waiting for moments to explode because it's not like he was timid when he blasted him

and had him rocked and hurt. He never made a fan out of me, Tyrone. And the thing is, what was interesting is I had a similar... You didn't think you weren't a fan after the Darren Till fight? Oh, absolutely. Right. And same with the Robbie Lola fight. You know, that was an incredible knockout.

And this was the thing that was frustrating. is that he had the capability to do that kind of thing. And sometimes I just felt like he wanted to play King of the Hill. He didn't want to be the smashing champion that other fighters did. You know what I mean? Well, you know, you got to think, like, he had some fights that didn't go his way as well. Strike Force, the Nate Marquard fight. The Nate Marquard fight when he got chaoed, where Nate hit him with, like, a video game combination

with those elbows against the cage. Like, so there's consequences to just wait. And by the way, Nate Markworm, boy, there's the guy that kind of people forget how fucking good that guy was. When he was in his prime, woo. When he went over to Strike Force, he was a fucking monster, dude. That guy was good. He was good. You know, I had heard stories about him training in Colorado with GSP, with all those guys.

Like, dude, Nate Mark Corp fucked everybody up. He was that good at one point in time. So many names of fighters that have just been kind of lost to time that people don't realize that they were so good. Eve Edwards, there's another one. I talk about him all the time. There's a point in time where Eve Edwards

was the best 155 pound around the planet. Facts. Yeah, it's just like people forget. People forget how good people were. Interesting, the point you made about counterstrike and I've always thought this about guard playing as well. If you're a guard player, you've kind of got to accept

that you're losing until you win. Yeah. It's like Machida was one of the best examples of a counterstriker. And then, you know, say Adasanya against Paolo Costa. Paulo Costa was in the center of the cage for most of that. Yeah.

So if you're just looking at Octagon Control, well, you're going to score it's Paolo because he was in the center. But there was no doubt that Izzy was just toying with him and lighting him from a distance. Yeah, but he couldn't say Oxygen Control because Izzy was landing all his shots. But that's the thing is that that was a very, very clear one, right? Right. Where you've got one person moving back and giving the center of the cage,

but clearly winning on the striking. Whereas if when it gets very even with the strike, You have to really have good judges to be able to pick apart who's landing what. Yes. Because like we had a fight the other week, Jacob Kasuba, he was fighting the Tan Shult, and he was backing up the whole fight, but he was landing way more strikes than his opponent. But even when it got to the end of the fight, I'm like, are these judges going to score this right?

Because they don't have the stats that we have on the screen in front of us, right? They should. Exactly they should. But because they don't, are they going to go, oh, well, you know, we was moving forward And we had a fight in Sioux Falls the other day where the female fighter, Sharon Bowers, was pushing forward and she was landing. But her opponent was backing up and countering a lot of the shots. And the judges scored it to Sabrina. It was, you know, it was the right decision to make.

But the crowd didn't like it because they felt like the Bowers was the one pushing forward and making a fight out of it. Yeah, but that's casuals. Of course, yeah. But it is a risky thing to be a counter-striker and a guard player in MMA because you have to, first of all, credit the judges to see what. But who's left that's a guard player? Not many, right? It's kind of been cycled out of the game. Olivera was like the best at it.

But even that didn't work out for him in sometimes, did it? There was a lot of time he'd spend energy guard playing. A lot of the time why good wrestlers decide not to wrestle because the amount of energy it costs. That's true, but I mean, look what he did to Gamrot, and that was super impressive. Gamrot's so good. So good. The fact that Gamrodot was just lost on the ground with Olivera. Did you how good Oliver is?

Do you remember Gamrott's debut against Garam Katata-Ladze? Like both of those guys. He's in karate combat now. Both of those guys are so elite. And then when they got matched up against each other in their USC debut, I'm like, man, people aren't going to realize how good this matchup is. Right, right, right. Like, Sarukin, I called his debut against, against Macachiev. Yeah.

Like, and he was 5% behind Islam in that fight. But that 5% was, you know, incredible fight. Yeah. Yeah. I am very curious to see how Pereira does against Cyril. gone. Yeah. Serial gone's a different thing.

Just moves differently for a big guy, doesn't he? He's also a real heavyweight. There ain't a fucking time since he's been 15 where that guy's making 185. No. Right? That's a big man. And he's an incredible athlete and a really elite striker, like a really good striker. Like, and a fucking big heavyweight man.

And I know Pereira weighs like 260 now. I get it. I get it. Yeah, he's a heavyweight. Yep, definitely. But he was 185. It was 185. Just a few years ago.

And he was a 185 pound champion. And then the 205 pound champion. And I don't think Cyril gone could even make 205. No. Cyril's big. Yeah. And he's big and fucking thick. And he's good, man.

And I'm telling you, that Tom Hardy fight, excuse me, Tom Aspenol fight. Tom Hardy fight. My mind sucks. The Tom Aspinall fight in that first round before the eye pokes were disgraceful. Like, first of all, I think... Still got to fix the gloves. Oh, God.

You know, my solution is mittens. We don't do this anyway. Why are these out like this? Yeah. It's a fucking... It's a good point. The thing that annoyed me is, like, they went through all the effort to fix the gloves. But they never asked a fighter or a person that wraps hands, like, what they actually

thought. They were getting contender series fighters to grade them. And of course, they're all like, they're great. They've got UFC on them. I'm so happy to be here. You know what I mean? like you know like talk to tape for example I'm like they must have asked you

about the hand wrapping about the gloves and stuff because the problem is right like when you get there on Tuesday and you try your gloves on you're like yeah they feel good and then you get to fight night and they put a quarter inch of padding underneath and then you try and to close your hand and like the difference between like the pride gloves or the rising gloves or the like the fairtex

I always used to use fairtex if I could there's a curve in the glove right when you try your gloves on what the blue shirts backstage do because they know the game is they roll the glove up and then wrap it with the velcro of the wrist so it stays rolled from Tuesday to Saturday right and then when you get them on Saturday they've kind of curved a little bit right but it's not the curve is not built into the padding right and the the new ones that they made there was just too much technology and not in a common sense have you used Trevor Whitman's i have Veronica's just got a pair of them the best they are very very

good. They're the best. That's an ownership problem though, isn't it? It is. I've tried to negotiate that and broker that and maybe I still can be successful. I just talk to them. I talked to Trevor. Maybe it still can be done. But even with Trevor's, the fingers are still exposed. And I think there's certain guys who just have this fucking impulse to do that. And I think one point, every time. Poked somebody in the eye, one point. Every fucking time. Because there's a lot of fighters that have never poked anybody in the eye, right? So how come? How come?

They've been in wild scraps, never poked anybody in the eye. Yeah. I watch one championship, Small Glover's Muay Thai, and they are in range. They're not poking each other. No, they're not. And by the way, I love Small Gloves Moitai. It's so cool. It's so good.

It's so cool. And it's so interesting. And for all these people that hate when fights go to the ground, my God, that's the solution. And I've been trying to sell this to the UFC forever. I'm like, fuck all this slap fight shit. And I know you're really interested in Zufuf. boxing, that's great. How about UFC striking? How about UFC Muay? Be amazing. You know, because, and even kickboxing, what they're

doing with one, you know, guys like Yuki-Josa and, you know? Watch out for Ben Wallace, have you seen this? Oh, yeah, he's a beast, man. I signed him to PFL a little while ago. Just can't get it matched. Just couldn't get in matched. People don't want to stand with them. You click on his, on his Instagram and he's, I mean, in my opinion, he's one of the best strikers in the world right now. There's just, and I've, you know, he trained, trained at renegade for a long time with the Edwards brothers and I would watch him just play spa with people and the level of trickery like that's where you like go back to saying about dimensions right

there are rangers in fights and then there are dimension in those ranges yeah he's at like a Jedi level of dimension of understanding of striking and and and and to see him have the success he has me stopping John Linneka with calf kicks and you know yeah yeah very impressive you're going to see him go straight to their time. How is one doing? Are they not good from what I can tell. Yeah, that's what I've heard as well. And that concerns me because if we have more limited options, that sucks. Yeah. This is why, I mean, and I've, I, you know, I feel very much like I'm in the right place now with the PFL because we need more organizations. Yes. We need more organizations. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the USC is not the custodian of the sport that we need

right now, you know. What do you think they're doing wrong? I mean, I think it's a variety of different things. I mean, underpaying the fighters, killing the sponsorship market, they buried a lot of growth of the subculture. You know, you remember the old UFC expos that we used to do. I'd do like five, six hours a day signing. Tap out over to Silver Star, over to Zion. And, like, as soon as that was all killed off,

a lot of that subculture died off. And all those subcultures offer jobs outside of fighting, you know. It allows people to then start a brand. sponsor some young fighters like Charles Lewis mask paid me double what I was getting paid for my purse when I was in Japan double just to wear

tap out shorts on a in a tournament and cage force like he didn't need to do that but he was a fan of the sport he loved it and he wanted to support it and back in the day like I had sponsors like Eric Records and stuff that was on my banner just a heavy metal brand from like my

local town like the idea of being able to to have these personal sponsors that would help you out was massive. Yeah. And then the other thing that the other issue that we've got is that we don't have enough events now for a lot of fighters to get experience. So then a lot of the people that get signed to contenders are like five, six, seven fights into their career.

I was talking to somebody about this other day, and there's good clear examples. Like I was 19 and 6 when I joined the UFC in 2028. Connor McGregor had already built a brand and a follow. Wait, you just said 2028. Sorry, 2008. Maybe there's a return on the car. 2008.

I was like, are you a time travel? I feel like I am here a little bit with the UFO. Yeah, so in 2008, like, there was, where was I going? I lost my train of thought. Sponsors, yeah. So, like, we had sponsors. There was a subculture that was growing around the brand. And there were shows that would host you long enough for you to develop a brand, right?

So, like, I didn't have nearly as big of a following as Connor McGregor or Paddy Pimlet. But I had a similar platform, right? I was Cage Warriors champ. Then Connor was Cage Warriors champ. And he was an established fighter with a game and a following before he came to the UFC. Same with Paddy. We don't see that as much anymore, right? We don't see the fighters growing on their local scene and building a local fan base

that really starts to grow the sport on a grassroots level, you know? Right, but why is that the UFC's responsibility? Oh, no, I'm not saying it is. What I'm saying is that unfortunately, I think the USC is now kind of paying for the control that they took many years ago because the industry has been stifled around it. Like, the sponsorship industry for a start was massive, you know. The problem with it was there was a lot of sponsors that weren't paying. So a lot of fighters would wind up in lawsuits and there was a lot of bullshit that was going on. Some of them were and it was great.

Yeah. You know, like, you know, I'm really good friends with Brendan Schaub. and there was a point in time where he was making X amount for a fight, but he was making like three times that in sponsors. Yeah. I mean, I doubled my show money on the GSP fight because of my banner. I only got $22,000 for that fight. Which is crazy.

Crazy. It's crazy. World title fight. But that's what I signed up for. I wasn't going for the money, you know what I mean? But in hindsight, when I look at it and GSP was getting, I mean, you get like $6 million. He spent quarter of a million on his training camp. How could I compete?

Like, he would book out a whole hotel and bring guys in from New York. I had a, I had older in my corner who at the time was a brown belt, you know, I, you know, and I had a tieboxing coach that was telling him to knee him in the head on the ground from bottom position, you know, like bless him, he just didn't know the rules. I didn't have the support network because I just, I couldn't afford what I would have really needed for that, you know, but if I, if I go back to, you know, was, I mean, the sponsorship process was interesting because the first thing they did was they brought in the fees that the sponsorship companies had to pay. So it was like, if you're a, you're a, you're a, you know, it was, I mean, the sponsorship process was interesting. So it was, it was like, if you're a sponsorship. So it was, you're a a clothing brand, you have to pay $50,000 a year to sponsor UFC fighters and that goes to the UFC. Now, before that, as long as it wasn't offensive and it wasn't a conflict in sponsor, the UFC would tick it

and you'd carry on. Condom Depot. Oh man. Remember that? No. I turned them down a few times. But like if you think about it, like say Eric Records, right, they couldn't afford to pay the UFC $50,000. They would pay me £300 to

have the thing on my banner, right? So then as soon as you bring in this, okay, everybody has to pay 50,000 to be a sponsor in the UFC cage, almost all of the sponsors then fell out the market straight away. And then you've only got a few that are lingering. And then if you're a clothing distributor, if you sell a variety of different brands, it was $100,000 that you had to pay. So if you're a MMA warehouse and you're sponsoring Alistair Overim and your sponsorship budget for the year is $250,000, dollars and straight away a hundred grand's been taken out because the UFC need it just your pool's gone down right so you've got less money to give to the fighters and then you're sponsoring

less fighters overall I get that I get that argument and I definitely agree about fighter pay like I'm always in favor of fighters getting paid more it's a very dangerous job and it's the only thing that people are paying to see they're not paying to look at the cage they're not paying to look at the ring card girls and not paying to hear me talk they're paying to watch the fights the fighters should get the majority of the money. And it is a problem when they don't have leverage. And I think that it's great that you have things like MVP getting involved at the Netflix card. I wish the card was a little stronger, but it's difficult.

Like Lynn's fighting against Francis and Gano. Like, you know, you need, like, who the fuck is even available that's not signed to a contract that you can get Francis to fight? Yeah. That's not a goddamn execution, you know? You know, Francis is the legitimate heavyweight champion of the world. Absolutely. And the thing is the heavyweight division is always going to be more of a victim of the underpayment than any other industry. Is Francis no longer with the PFL?

No. How did that, what happened there? I just think it was, I just think it was a bad deal done by the previous owner, by the previous CEO. Oh, was the previous CEO? Yeah. So I'm not aware. So he fought Henan Ferreira in that one fight. Yes.

Is that the only fight that he had in the PFL? That's kind of crazy. Yeah. It was just, I mean, it was a bad deal for the PFL. And we've done a lot of, we've done a lot of bad deals. Who's that guy that just knocked out Henan Ferreira? Oh, Sergei Bill Esteni. Woo.

Used to train with Fedor and, uh, yeah. That guy is fucking legit. Yeah. And very, very fast. Yeah, man. Like him v. Tom Aspinall is an interesting fight. Oh, that is an interesting fight. Him versus anybody's interesting.

Him v. Cyril Gan. He moves a lot like Cyril Gant, but he's got Sambo background and, I mean, he's legit. I watched that Ferreira fight. And I was like, holy shit. Spunny's head around, didn't you? Yeah, dude. And, you know, I mean, this cat.

Yeah. Pull this up. Here we go. Look at this guy. He moves like Fador, too. He trained with Fadar, which is interesting. Yeah. Yes.

You want to get through to the third. Yeah, that's that little body shot. So third round was the finish. And it catches him with this massive shot. He looked so dominant, like, throughout the fight, man. Like, right away. He's a beast, isn't it? This kid is very, very legit.

Oh, my. Oh, my goodness. The speed. Yeah. So the world needs another fucking big heavyweight, man. Yeah. And this is awesome that this guy exists. What's his name again?

Sergei Bill Esteni. I just saw this yesterday. I'm guilty of not watching enough PFL. But the thing is, it's like the fights are legit. The talent is legit. But, man, it is just not getting the attention that it deserves. The thing is, as a UFC fan, I get it, right? because you want to watch one promotion where all the fighters are

so you can find out who the best is. Because that's what ultimately it was about, right? It was about finding that who's the best. Listen, man, that guy could kind of compete with anybody. Of course. Of course. And we've got guys that can across the sport. I mean, you know, across the promotion we have.

I mean, you know, Dakota, Thad Gene. You know, we've got some real, real good fighters. And even in, like, if you've not watched Lewis McGill and Dean Garnett, it is one of the best fights you'll ever see. There were 13 knockdowns in it. It was calm. But then we're also seeing really interesting things like the Scottish twister. Have you seen the Scottish Twister, right?

So that was Stevie Ray, who hit it against Pettis, and then he hit it against Lewis Long in Glasgow. And then he's passed it on to Jake Hadley. And then Jake Hadley's just submitted Matthias Matos with it. And it's fascinating, because it's kind of a twister. Uh-huh. It's like it's... Have you tried it?

Yeah. I mean, I struggle with it. So here it is. But look at this. The key is the foot. in the thigh. It's like an offside triangle. You can see that right foot is just hooked in. And he's going to threaten with an arm triangle. He's kind of holding Matos here. There's a bit of a handfight going on. He's going to keep hitting Matos and he's going to, Mattos is going to go to an arm

triangle position. Then he's going to start to try and force that right elbow down so he's not in an arm triangle and turn into the body triangle. But that right foot caught in his thigh doesn't allow him to turn fully into the guard. So look at this, how he turns in. Clears the head and there's the Frank, look at the foot on the inside of the thigh. Oh, that's nasty. So that is, I mean, I've had this done to me as well as I've done it. So you've got, you've got compression into the neck, pressure into the lower back, your hips being lifted off the... It's a horrible submission.

It looks horrible. And, oh, this is the Cheesecake Assassin demo in it. Interesting. But, like, and this is what's fascinating still to me about MMA is that I still feel like these technologies that we're not, we've not yet discovered. The calf kick up being a good example. Scottish Twister being another good example What comes next? There's going to be some shit

I've got books and books and martial arts books And I feel like if I dug I might find something But yeah I don't know what's missing Here's something that I think Might be missing Front leg roundhouse kick to the face

Guys who are fast with that I used to see that a lot In Taekwondo I used to see that a lot There's guys like a just throw it out there Like a jab And if it hits you in the face You're fucked

And we've seen it a few times in MMA. We've seen a few guys get dropped. We saw Rose Domitunis and Jean-Weilly. You just don't see it very often. And man, if you're good at that, if you have a fast one, that is a devastating kick. Yeah. See, that is a good example because that's a great technique

and a great setup. Because the reason why the head kick landed is because you should just land an inside low kick. Yes. So, Waley had pulled her lead leg back and pitched her head forward. Yeah. A beautiful set. I totally agree with you.

I think there's a lot that's still to be discovered. It's just stunning to me how few people get cracked with that. I felt like that was a major weapon when I was doing Taekwendo. A lot of people used that. Crescent kick as well.

Oh, yeah. There's a few guys that used that still. Anderson used that a few times. Yeah. There's a cat. I'm so sorry, man. I forget your name. But there's a dude who's got a video

on Instagram where he knocks his guy out with an inside crescent kick to the face. There's a few people that are pulling it off. you know yeah there's definitely more to come there's definitely a lot more there are a lot more techniques that i also think there are going to be a lot more um targets on the body that can be exploited that we're not yet exploited right you know well a lot of the guys in um in kickboxing in particular in one are using that toe kick to the body yes app chaggy there's this cat yes what is his name jamie i've actually congratulated this guy i apologize sir because i went back and forth with

him. Jason Barry, is that what it just said? Back it up a little bit. Before that. Before that. Before that. See, look at those Cage Warriors gloves. Justin Barry. Justin Barry. That's it. Look at the curve in those Cage Warriors gloves.

Mm-hmm. So they're basically, they're either Fair Tex gloves or they're a copy of the Fairtext Gloves. Look how he does that. It's crazy. Slick, isn't it? Crazy. Very cool.

Crazy. Yeah, Cage Warriors is another great organization that's really producing elite talent. It's just, I agree with you, there's not enough of them. But it's like, what does the PFL have to do to get more attention? You know, because it seems like they're throwing a lot of money at fighters. Like, is that million dollar thing still happening? No, we've got rid of the tournament. We've gone to regular shows now. So we have main and co-main. We've got rankings now done by combat registry. They don't have all the crazy point system where you're, all that's gone. That didn't make any fucking sense. I'll be honest. I love the PFL, but PFL's been its own worst

enemy for many, many years, right? We've got a new CEO, John Martin, who's, he's been on Ariel's show a couple of times, he does great interviews. He loves the sport from a fan's perspective. It doesn't know it quite as much as other people, but he's making the right moves and making the right decisions. Previously, I mean, I love Don Davis, but he was like Willie Wonka of MMA. He was like, I've got a great idea, let's do this, and blah, blah, and then he had Pete Murray, who just was consistently making bad deals and bad decisions. Yeah, all the point things were like, I hated it. I didn't understand any of it.

So I was running PFL Europe for a couple of three years. I stepped in at the end of 2022 as commentator. In 2023, I became the head of fighter ops for Europe. So I was doing all the sign and matchmaking. I only had four shows a year. But, I mean, it was a passion project for me to sign all these young guys and match them. And my argument was every single, and I always used to say this to the fighters. Because remember when Dana used to do this back on the old weighing days where he'd get all the fighters?

No corner men, no coaches. just translators and the fighters. And we'd gather in one of the changing rooms in the arena. And Dana give us this speech. And it was stirring. Like, we were all there to murder each other. But for like five minutes, we all felt like we were in it together. And I loved that feeling.

I missed it. Even walking out, we're like fist bumping each other and we're all hyped. And that's where he'd announce the bonus amounts and stuff. So I would do that with PFO Europe. I'd gather all the fighters together. And I'm like, look, there's not a single fight on this card that has been matched for one person to win. Every single person stepping into the cage has got a fair chance of winning. Your destiny is in your hands, right?

And with PFO Europe, I was able to build a good roster and to, I mean, we had some fantastic shows. But when I first inherited it, we had four tournaments, right? So I had to sign 16 fighters, sorry, eight fighters per weight class. So I had 32 fighters on my roster that was done already before the years started. And then I'm having to get loads of different flags. So we're going into a place and I've got a bunch of fighters on the card that I don't need that aren't going to sell any tickets And it was just working against me constantly So I pushed to go down to two tournaments and have just a normal MMA show for the rest of it

And that worked out well, but They just they loved the tournament format because it was a distinguishing factor and the question is you know what do we have to do to To make a difference like I mean, I think we are doing those we are making those moves We have to make more content tell the fighters stories better for sure Maybe you guys should start a fucking moitai. I'm down for it. I've suggested it. I've suggested it.

I've just fucking up with that. I sent Dana all these different fights. I send him all these, um, uh, uh, Imangaziliev. That dude, Azadula, Imangaziliev. Holy shit is that guy good. I'm like, look at this. Like, this is what people want to see, man. Like, everybody boos when the fights go to the ground.

If it gets boring, this shit's never boring. Yeah. Maybe you guys should pick up the slack. 100%. I mean, I've thrown hundreds of ideas on the table. I always am. That might be the move, man. That might be would differentiate.

Yeah, I think so. Because look how big it is with one. I mean, it's essentially become most of their fights now. Yeah. And it's accommodating fighters that have got two or three hundred fights in another discipline that don't want to learn how to wrestle or grapple, but they are the elitest of elite strikers. And so easy to translate. Everybody knows what's going on.

Yeah. A kick to the face is a kick to the face. Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, I think, but I'm always. throwing ideas at the PFO. The one that stuck was introducing elbows. Like when I first started working with the PFO, we didn't have elbows because crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Like, and I hated it. You know, and I'm like... Well, it's pride. Pride didn't have elbows. Yeah. Did Belator? Belator had elbows.

So what the fuck? Well, see, that was my, that was my selling point. That was the way I got, I managed to convince them. I said, okay, right, we've taken on Belator now. We've inherited Bellator and everything that it was. Right. Take the rules too. Right. Yeah. How, but, well, this is how I pitched it to them, right? One of my biggest opponents was Ray Cepho. He did not want elbows at it and I could not get my head around it because he's always coaching elbows from the corner right? Why didn't he want elbows?

I'm not sure. I couldn't get my head around it but the thing that pushed it over the line was me going, okay, right, we've just taken on Bellator, right? We've got Bellator and we've got PFL. Imagine in a world where we now apply PFL rules to Belator what are the fans going to say? Well, that'd be terrible. They'd hate it because you're taking

elbows out. I'm like, you've illustrated my point. Exactly. So clearly that's not the right way to go, so then we need elbows. Well, I'm glad they listen to you because that's ridiculous. Yeah. You know, what really needs to happen is knees to the head on the ground. 100%. Absolutely. It's crazy that someone could just huddle in a turtle position

and not get pummeled. Like, you shouldn't be in that position. The only thing I can do without, and I loved it in pride and I wanted to fight in pride for the soccer kicks as well. That's the only thing I would, I can reasonably do without. And the reason why... No ring. The ring is different.

You can move. Yeah. The problem with being planted into the cage and get stomped or soccer kicked. For sure. Remember Wes Sims Frank Mir? Stumped him, yeah. The thing with, and I've watched every single pride fight that's ever existed, I'm sure. I only ever see people get involved in the head when the fight's already pretty much done.

Right. Right. So it's... Melvin Manhoof and Sakharabo. Exactly. It's like the ice it on the cake that we don't necessarily need when you can just hit him with one more shot. And they tried something in cage rage if you... when cage rage existed back in the day,

where the referee would decide that you could stump on or kick him in the head. Let me ask you this. What do you think about sidekicks to the knees? I don't mind it. The problem with that is, it's one shot and you're out for a year. But then heel hooks are just as dangerous, aren't they? But they're not because you can tap. You can tap and you can hold on to the arms before it gets to that position.

You can tap. The thing about the sidekick to the knee, like, what's his face? Calaiso Roundtree. Yeah, but the guy, Modestus. Modestus, Baccacus. When you watch his knee go sideways like that, you're like, good Lord. You're done for a year. If you're ever the same again.

I mean, I know Shavkats in a similar situation right now, isn't it? But you can't hit to the back of the head. But you do hit to the back of the head. Because if it's a roundhouse kick and it goes over the shoulder, guess where it lands. Absolutely. Yeah. But the thing is, the back of the head is more protecting from the bottom of the base of the skull downwards. Right.

But if someone throws a roundhouse kick. and it goes over the shoulder. Yeah. It's going bong right to the back of the head. But then how many football players in a season are taken out with a low tackle? I mean, it's the same in rugby as well. It's like, for me, that is a risk of the sport. That is a part of the...

But it's a victory with an illegal move that we all allow. It's only illegal because you can't strike to the knee. No, no, no. Back of the head kick. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. You know what I'm saying? The back of the head kick, you win by knockout, And you shouldn't have hit them there. Yeah.

But then also you've got to go into, well, did they turn their head? What was the circumstance of it? That's true. I mean, the thing, like, you can't, in the rules, you can't strike joints, right? But then it was the same thing when we had elbows. And I'm, like, we're doing shows in France. And I'm saying to the French commission, we don't have elbows. And they're like, okay, so where does the elbow start and where does the, you know, where is it forearm?

Right. But a thing about, like, attacking the knees, you would have to say, well, it's got to be a straight kick where you. you hyper extend the knees because you can't say don't leg kick the knees because you're going to be able to leg kick the back of the knee always. If you take that out, you're taking out a giant chunk of all techniques. But the side kick to the knee, the problem with that is you're going to ruin careers. Like there's a lot of guys that are just not the same. Tiago Silva, I don't think it was ever the same after the John Jones fight.

In my mind, it's the game we play. I agree with you. I see your point. I see it. No one's dying from a knee injury. It's very unusual too. It's like the Modestestis fight. It was one fight that you can name, and Khalil's obviously a very elite striker.

Yeah. But, yeah. I don't mind it. I genuinely don't. I mean, I'm more interested in making sure the fights are protected when they can't protect themselves. That's where we need to raise everyone's understanding of what's happening. Yeah, I agree with you. Listen, brother, always good to talk to you.

We should do this more often. We should. Absolutely. Every six years. We said, yeah. We're back in Austin soon, though. We're back in Austin soon. Oh, where are you guys in July?

Johnny Eblen's fighting Costello Van Steenis in the rematch at the Moody Center. When in July? July 19th, Saturday. Saturday, July 19th is that the right day? Oh, motherfucker. Or is it the 18th? I'm out of town. I know where you are. God damn it. I'm out of town. Yeah, I know. I know where you are. I'll be there.

You'll be there? Yeah, I think I'll be there. Okay, well, we'll talk about it afterwards. I don't know what we're talking about. Yeah, but that's, but yeah, Johnny Ebel and Costa Levantsteen. That's too bad. I want to see that. Fuck. Yeah. And I will say like for me, our middleweight division is probably the most competitive with the UFC's middleweight division. With Johnny Eblon. Like Costello Van Steenus, the current champ.

Did you watch that fight? No. So Johnny Eblen, undefeated in 17-18 fights, was beating the brakes off Costello for most of it. Like last 10 seconds. Yes, I did see that. Yes, that's right. So Costello's defended his belt.

He beat Fabian Edwards, Travis Brown elbows. Yes. And then Johnny Eblen just rag-dold Brian Battle like it was nothing. That was insane. No, he's a beast, dude. Well, now those two boys are going to rematch. Austin at the Moody Center, middle of July. It's going to be a good one.

I wish I was here. Me too. All right. Thank you, brother. Very good to see you always. Dan Hardy, what's your Instagram? Dan Hardy, Eminem. Dan Hardy, Eminem.

All right. Bye, everybody.