The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #26 with Big John McCarthy

Episode Date: May 16, 2018

Joe sits down with Big John McCarthy to discuss MMA history.

Five, four, three, two, one. Boom, and we're live with the OG of OGs. If there's more of an OG MMA character than you, I don't know who the fuck they would be. Hoist Gracie and you. That's about as OG as it gets, right? You know what that means? What does that mean? You're both fucking old.

We're all old. Yeah, we're old. I was watching, the other day was the 20th anniversary of Dan Henderson's first UFC appearance. Oh my God. And there's me interviewing him afterwards. I'm like, who's that fucking little kid interviewing Dan Henderson? Who's Dan Henderson pretending to be Dan Henderson? UFC 12.

Yeah. Dothan, Alabama. Well, you got transferred. Yeah. Well, we're supposed to go up to Buffalo. Go down to Dothan. They canceled it out of New York. New York said, get out of here.

And we had to take a puddle jumper plane. Remember all that, Jess? Oh, dude, I remember it very well. I was in court. God damn, I knew I was in trouble. Yeah, you were one of the people that I cite all the time for why that stupid reason that the 12 to 6 elbow, you're the one who just explained it to me. Because I couldn't believe that what you're telling me was true.

That the reason 12 to 6 elbows were illegal. Well, just tell the story. The truth of the story is back, there's so many stories about rules and how they came about. And, you know, there's guys claiming things and it's like, really? Okay. You know, look, I have paperwork that shows how things came out and at what time it was, and I still have my computers

that I have things written on that we went over stuff. You have computers from the 90s? Dude, I still have. No, I've got floppy disk. No, you don't. Swear to God. You do? Unbelievable, isn't it?

What do you do with it? Not a damn thing. How much can a floppy disk hold? Not even like a megabyte, right don't. Swear to God. You do? Unbelievable, isn't it? What do you do with it? Not a damn thing. How much can a floppy disk hold? Not even like a megabyte, right? Nothing. It holds a couple of pages of a document. But do you remember when the floppy disk went away, everybody panicked? Like, what are you doing?

You're fucking taking away the floppy disk? That's outrageous. What are you going to put stuff on? Yeah, when Mac got rid of the floppy disk, I remember people were like, these guys are assholes. Like, what are they thinking? When Matt got rid of floppy disk, I remember people were like, these guys are assholes. What are they thinking? But anyways, when the unified rules, you know, what happened was everyone looks at the UFC and says, oh, you know, when the UFC went to the first show that was done in New Jersey was the IFC.

Paul Smith's show. It was done in September. I want to say, of 1999. And the UFC went there in November of 1999. And you have to go back and understand the history of what was going on. And this is where I have my issues with people that try to change history and rewrite things. And what was going on was semaphore entertainment group at the time owned the ufc that's who you were working right bob meyerowitz bob meyerowitz and mclaren camel mclaren was long gone you know and i love by then by 99 oh my god yes yeah you know and he

talked he was there when i came around in 97 yeah well i think he hired you yeah yeah yeah and you know he did some stuff he comes up with you know I'm the co-creator of the UFC. You know what? Let me just ask one question. If you're the co-creator, how come you never owned one bit of it? Doesn't make sense, does it? Are you calling out Campbell McLaren on this podcast? Hell yes.

How dare you? You know what? I'm tired. Why lie? I don't know. He did things. And I will absolutely give him credit for what he did. Because he was the reason that it actually made it to pay-per-view.

Because Art Davey had gone to everyone. Prime Ticket at the time was a pay-per-view provider. Because the pay-per-view world back then was about 15 million in the U.S. It's not like it is now. You were limited. But Prime Ticket was one. HBO was another. And he had gone to all those and they all turned no, no, no, no, no.

And there was this one company Semaphore Entertainment Group out of New York that did rock and roll shows and they did one sporting event. It was Martina Navratilova against Jimmy Connors in tennis. Oh, wow.

I remember that. Remake of the Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs thing. Wow. I remember that. That's crazy. That was them? I didn't know that was semaphore. That was the only sporting thing they'd ever done before the UFC.

But they were looking for something that they could rerun and make happen again and again. And Campbell looked at what Art brought to him and said, I think this could be that thing. And Horian came up with the idea. Horian Gracie, right? Negative. Negative. Not true. He says he came up with the idea.

Are you saying, you calling out Horian Gracie and Campbell McLaren? I'm not calling out Horian. All in the first five minutes? Big John doesn't fuck around. Look it. Horian hadie and Campbell McLaren all in the first five minutes. Big John doesn't fuck around. Look it. Horian had his thing. I fell in love with what they did. That's how I got involved.

Right. But Horian, or Davey, went to Horian because he needed validity. He needed somebody to give actual value and some credence to what he was trying to do. Because he went to Horian off of a, there was an article in Playboy magazine, Bad. And it was about Horian. And this guy, this family that would fight anybody. When you say Bad, it was a bad article? No, that was called Bad.

That was the actual title. B-A-D across two pages. Bad was the title. I remember reading the article. I don't remember that part about it. But it was basically they were offering a lot of money to fight anybody, right? Well, it was the whole thing of the $100,000 challenge. But he didn't have $100,000.

Right. And so it was, well, if you bring $100,000, I'll put up $100,000. No one's bringing $100,000. Right. So it was just more like a publicity stunt. Yeah. And they did, obviously, they had the Gracie Challenge before that, and they did all the Gracie in action tapes that we had all seen.

Yep. And you'd see all these karate masters get taken down and strangled. And that was the thing that I loved the fact. I can go through the whole thing of how I met Horian, but when I met him, there was never anything about, well, you know, we, we would do this in that situation, but we can't do that because we'll hurt you or, you know, and that was what happened in a lot of martial arts. Oh, well, we can't do that because that would really, that'll hurt you.

That'll kill you. And he was like, let's do it every time. And that's what I fell in love with is like hey they're not phony they're real right yeah and the first time i ever you know did anything with them hoist gracie armbarred me and i went how did you do that right and i just fell in love with it a lot of people said that about hoist gracie how did you do that yeah those early days of the ufc it was boy i mean you want to talk about i mean it really played it out perfectly because it really was the best version of explaining jujitsu. Like, how do you show the effectiveness of jujitsu?

Well, here's what you do. You lock some dudes in a cage with no rules, guy's bigger than him, and he's wearing his gi, so he's the only one that looks like what we think of as a martial artist, right? And you get these guys Everyone else looks like big old street thugs. They're jacked up on steroids. They're giant and they're running after them and we always would think of

like Bruce Lee and these martial artists who technique over size and they would beat all these people but in the real world that shit didn't work. Nope. It just didn't work. Bigger guys always fucked you up. They were heavier the real world, that shit didn't work. It just didn't work. Bigger guys always fucked you up. They were heavier. You hit them.

It didn't work. You bounced off of them. They got you on the ground. They punched your face in. But all of a sudden, there was this little guy who wasn't little, but he was 175 pounds. In comparison to the rest of the people, he was fairly small. And he was tapping guys with triangles off his back and arm barring people. And everybody would tap.

It's the greatest infomercial ever. It was the greatest. Exactly. It got me on board. I mean, me and everybody else. I mean, all these people that, like me, who came from a striking background, I was like, holy shit. Like, this is crazy. That's where I look at Horian was brilliant because he listened to what Art said and goes.

So whose idea was it? It was Art's. It was Art's idea to have a bunch of guys fight. Absolutely. brilliant because he listened to what Art said and goes, and look at Art. So whose idea was it? It was Art's. It was Art's idea to have a bunch of guys fight. Absolutely. 100%. Well, how much did Art own of it? He owned, I want to say, basically 25%.

So when they sold it to Zufa, he got a piece of that. Well, no. He was gone long before that. You got to figure when there was two. There was WoW Promotions, and WoW Promotions came from War of the Worlds because Art had named the whole competition War of the Worlds. Oh. And then Semaphore Entertainment Group changed it to the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

I vaguely remember that whole thing. A guy named Michael Abrams is the one that named it. Wow. So when Art had with Horian, he gave Horian 25%. He had 25%. And Bob Meyerowitz owned 50% because of putting it on pay-per-view. So you had WOW Promotions owning 50%. Semaphore Entertainment Group owning 50%.

And actually WOW owned a little bit less because they had brought together investors, and they were trying to get $250,000, and they got somewhere around $115,000, $112,000 of investment that they put up because that was going to be part of the money for the people that were competing in it. It's crazy when you think about what it is now. Because this is, we're talking about 1993. What new sport can you think of other than MMA from 1993 that's now a huge global force? I mean, it is something that everybody talks about. Globally nothing. The one thing that you can look at and say, wow, that's really gained traction, American Ninja Warrior. Oh, yeah. But it's not a – It's an athletic competition.

It's a show. Yeah. It's a show. Yeah, that definitely gained traction. That's a fun fucking show. It is. Dude. I didn't realize how fun that show was.

I never watched it until like a year ago. Those people are incredible. Oh, yeah. As far as athletes and the ability to – I mean, just the grip strength. Because you know. Everyone thinks, oh, you can hang on a bar forever. No, you can't. We learned in Fear Factor that girls are better at that than guys.

Less body weight. Less body weight. I wouldn't have believed it. I looked at this. We had this one guy on the show that was jacked. Big, thick, old dude. And there was girls that were like 125 pounds, 130 pounds. And this guy, he was toast at like a minute and 30 seconds. Done. He was done. And these girls were hanging in there. I was like, this know, 125 pounds, 130 pounds. And this guy was, he was toast at like a minute and 30 seconds.

Done. He was done. And these girls were hanging in there. I was like, this is crazy. This is really interesting. Because I would think the girl's hands were weak, I would think. Nope, because it's the matter. The only difference that you can make it is you change the size of the bar and start making

the bar bigger. Now the man starts to have more of an advantage because of his hand being bigger. Right, right, right. And that will take the advantage away from the girl because now she's actually starting to cup over and her finger strength starts to go before. Right, yeah. So, yeah, so MMA, who named it mixed martial arts? You know what, that's a, look, that's a whole story and you're going to hear.

I heard it was you. Well, I give credit to Jeff Blatnick as far as look at, he didn't come up with the term who did, but the truth of the, you know, and this is the first thing I can tell you. I wrote, I wrote a, uh, I had to do what's called a work for LAPD because I worked for LAPD back in 1993, 93 into 94. And it was because I was going to referee the second UFC, which was March 11th in 1994. And for me to actually work, the department has to allow me to, I have to ask for permission and then they have to grant that permission. Was there a concern that it was too outrageous? Well, that was part of the whole thing is I didn't want to say, oh, I got two guys going into a cage.

They're going to beat the shit out of each other. Right. So the first thing I put was a martial arts referee. Okay. And then they said, well, what kind of martial arts? So I wrote mixed martial arts referee. Now, I can tell you that that was in 90, right at the end of 93. And where did you get that term?

I didn't get it from anywhere other than I'm sitting there trying to think. But I do know that there was a columnist, a sports writer from the LA Times that wrote about the very first UFC. And in his article wrote mixed martial arts. Oh, so maybe it was him. Well, you got John Peretti saying that he did it back in 1983. It's like, okay, well, if no one's saying it, it doesn't mean shit. Right. Okay?

So the truth of the matter is- So Peretti might have said it in 83. He might have said it, but it didn't mean anything. Right. Because the fact of the matter is, and it doesn't matter what I wrote, what matters is when you joined it, when you joined the UFC, it was still considered no holds barred, NHB. Yeah, NHB was what we called it.

And it was something that was, and this is probably part of my problem with Campbell McLaren is back before UFC 2, they had him on Good Morning America with Jim Brown. And you go back to that and he came up with the line that you could win by knockout, tap out or death. Okay. After that, I was in court having that thrown in my face by the freaking attorneys trying to put us down saying, isn't this what your company – no, that's not what my company says. Humans cockfighting. That's what an idiot said. Yeah.

Okay. And so he still to this day thinks he was magnificent with that. Okay. But you look and you go – Well, he might have been in terms of buying – It drew attention. It drew attention. There's no doubt. But when we were trying to combat that, we were trying to get away from no holds barred

because no holds barred meant there's no rules and there was rules. But the thing is, it's still no holds barred. I mean, you could do inside heel hooks. You could do the Imanari choke. You could do whatever you want. You could do a lot. Holds. In terms of holds.

That's true. That's like it came from wrestling, you could do whatever you want. You could do a lot. Holds. In terms of holds. That's true. That's like it came from wrestling, right? Absolutely. Because in wrestling there was... That was it. Knowles-Barr. In amateur wrestling, too, there was things you couldn't do, right? There were certain headlocks you couldn't do in wrestling competitions.

All kinds. You have to have an arm in instead of having just the neck. Holds-Barr. So no holds-Barr. It's essentially still NHB. Still. Yeah. But back then it was was there

eye gouging ever no never the very first set of rules for the first ufc and you know and this is again you know there's people saying oh i came up with the five minute round it's like you're a fucking liar i'm sorry you are calling everybody out dude you know what i'm tired of freaking sitting there having people lie because there's a lot of people out there that come up with stuff and you go, really? I can prove that wrong. When you talk about five-minute rounds, the very first UFC had three rules. No eye gouging, no biting, no groin strikes. Everything else was allowed.

When did groin strikes come into the picture, though? Because everybody remembers Keith Hackney and Joe Son. Okay, hold on. Old school. into the picture though because everybody remembers keith hackney and joe saund okay hold on so that was cool that was ufc one and it was unlimited five minute rounds wasn't uh keith hackney joe saund ufc four yeah okay yeah this is see now this is the one thing one was unlimited unlimited five minute rounds but no fight went the five minutes. The longest one was two minutes and 30 some seconds. So after the first UFC,

the semaphore looked and said, well, why are we having rounds when none of the fights are going that long anyways? And so we're just going to take the round thing away. So we don't have any stop in the action. And then there was certain fighters, Zane Frazier being, you know, the main one saying, if I could have need to the groin, like I would in the action. And then there was certain fighters, Zane Frazier being the main one,

saying if I could have kneed to the groin like I would in my system and what I do, it would have been a completely different fight. And they went and said, okay, you can knee to the groin. You can hit to the groin. No eye gouging, no biting. That was UFC 2. That was the rules.

Wow. So no eye gouging, no biting, and no time limits, UFC 2. No time limits. Wow. It's just so crazy to think that this is a giant sport that's on Fox, it's on ESPN, it's a huge pay-per-view force, you hear about it all the time, you have a real group of experts wearing suits and ties discussing techniques. I mean, when you sit down and watch the Fox panel

and you see Tyron Woodley and Michael Bisping and Paul Felder and everybody sitting there discussing technique and strategy. And they need to thank people from the past that got them there. Yeah, I mean you go back and watch some of the old school shit where the sumo guy got his tooth kicked into the stands.

First fight, that got me my job. Did it really? Yeah, that fight right there, that's how I got my job. What happened? Well, Horian brought in two guys. He brought in Elio Vigio from Brazil, who is a, he's famous as being the death squad cop down in Rio. And he brought in a guy named Jaume Heto. And Jaume Heto was the referee for that very first fight between Taylor Tooley and Gerard Gardeau. And Gerard Gardeau, who was that gentleman that he blinded a guy? Oh, you're talking about Nakao in Japan.

Yeah, Yuki Nakao. Yuki Nakao, yeah. Who eventually went on to fight Hickson. Yeah, and Hickson just grappled with him. And Hickson wouldn't punch him because of his eye. He knew his eye was all fucked up. You know, there's been a couple of fights where I can tell you, you know, Hoist had a fight. And you go back and watch it, you'll see he doesn't punch somebody.

Yeah. Because his father told him, don't punch him. Yeah. You know, and that's part of, that was part of like, even the Gracie challenges, I can tell you back when, you know, even I did a couple. It was, they would tell you, you know, Horian was big into, you want to come into the school, you want to do this? If he didn't think the person had that much talent, he would put a student against him. He would never put one of his brothers. If he thought the guy was actually good, he'd put his brother.

Right. And one of the things they would tell you is, hey, take him down, choke him out, armbar, don't hit him. Right. And afterwards, they would go and tell the person, hey, what do you think? Do you believe? And if the person wanted to try again, they would go beat him. Now fuck around.

Hurt him. That was it. Okay, so you would know this then. What is the story about Hickson not being in the first UFC? Because everybody knows, everybody that knows jiu-jitsu knows that Hickson is widely regarded as the greatest of all time. When it comes to the Gracies, when it comes to anybody

of that era, Hickson was the fucking man. Hands down, you ask anybody. Still is the man. But isn't it crazy? He still is the man. But if you ask anybody, no one said, nah it was Ricardo Laborio or nah it was this guy. Everybody went, Hickson. How fucking good do you have to be?

Exactly. Everybody agrees. That's how lucky I was. He was my instructor. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy because you look and you... And this is the whole thing. This is what people don't understand.

And I hear guys now and it's like, God damn, are you that stupid? Because there's a... Well, I think that so-and-so could beat him now. And it's like... It's a that stupid? Because there's a wall I think that you know so-and-so could beat him now It's like it's a different 60 years old, but not only that it's a different world now exactly Hickson was he was so Advanced in comparison everybody else physically because he had figured out yoga He had figured out breathing and meditation and physical strength. He was incredibly flexible I'm sure you've seen those exercises he did on the bouncing beam where he's standing on a bouncing beam with one leg doing a full split in the air, holding his foot up in the

air, full split. And he had physical abilities that were just unparalleled. He had a muscular endurance. He used to do just an exercise class back in 91 or so. And he would do one-legged pikes, you know, squatting down one leg, keep your leg out. He would do that. He had a muscular endurance. He would do 50 one-legged pikes.

I mean, and I was dying. I mean, I was like- That's incredible. In a row? In a row. He would just keep going and people, guys were falling out and I was falling out and everybody row. He would just keep going. And guys were falling out. And I was falling out. And he'd just keep going.

And you go, what are you made of? Well, he just had unbelievable discipline. And also just an understanding of his body. His whole thing was he was so basic, Joe. You know, his jiu-jitsu. You look at guys now. And you look at, like, Eddie. I love guys that are innovators. And, you know, there's all kinds of people.

There's always going to be someone that's a naysayer. I look at Eddie Bravo and go, man, you're the guy who, you know, and you say it perfect all the time where he's got his ninja, you know, the ninja geeks, all these guys that are just geeky guys that are killers in jiu-jitsu now. Yeah. They're nerd assassins. That's what I call them.

That's exactly what you call them. And it's the truth. Yeah. But Eddie's that guy. He looked at things just different than other guys. And how can I do this different? That's how jiu-jitsu started as far as Brazilian jiu-jitsu with Elio. Sure.

Hickson was the guy. He was so basic as far as what he did, but he was so precise. Yeah. His ability to create a pressure. And the only guy that I've seen do it sometimes the same way as Damian Maia. You know, it was Hickson could create a pressure that was just like, where the, what is on top of him? And when you say basic, here's the, like some people think that's an insult.

No. I remember, but Vinny Magalhaes said that about Minotauro, says jujitsu is very basic and Minotauro got really upset. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that that is inaccurate, but it's not that Minotauro is arguably one of the greatest jiu-jitsu fighters of all time as far as MMA goes. I mean, what he did for jiu-jitsu when he armbarred Bob Sapp, I mean, holy shit. When he triangled Mark Coleman and all those different guys that he tapped out over in

Pride, you got to see basic jiu-jitsu, meaning the things that everybody knows, like triangles, armbars, chokes. Those are basics. It doesn't mean it's simple or dumb. No. Basics are everything. And Krohn. Kicks and Son.

Krohn has got that same style of jiu-jitsu, but yet is a world champion with it. I mean, there's something to be said for... It's like that old Bruce Lee expression. Don't fear a man that knows 10,000 kicks. Fear a man who's practiced one kick 10,000 times. Yeah. There's something to having a precision of those techniques that just, everybody knows what an arm, I mean, Hodger, Hodger Gracie, same thing to this day.

He's basic. Basic. Basic style crushes everybody. You can watch, one of my favorite jujitsu matches to watch is gary tonin against chrome gracie yeah it was what a match that was holy shit it is the difference of the more this is a guy that masters basics to a guy that's trying all kinds of different things now and really going after look at gordon ryan look at craig jones look at these guys look at what they're doing yeah that's this is the john donahue effect though really it's like well dean lister

and then john donahue you know dean lister saying it to john donahue why would you ignore 50 of the human body dude he said the same thing to me at one time it's like whoa damn why would you i never thought of that yeah and it's the truth but isn't it crazy that like one little statement like that can change jujitsu because if you look at what's going on now, like leg locks are just out of control now. Everybody's leg locking people. And you're watching the progression of guys from leg locking people in jujitsu to leg locking people now in MMA. Dylan Danis the other day with that foot lock.

Dylan Danis with a toe hold. He does a toe hold. You watch Neiman Gracie. He had it. You watch him. He's controlling both legs. You go, oh, you got a problem. He didn't get it. You watch Neiman Gracie. He had it. You watch him. He's controlling both legs. You go, oh, you got a problem. He didn't get it.

He made a mistake in it. And that's, hey, we all make a mistake. And I didn't catch that when I should have. But that control, those two legs together like that, it's crazy to watch. And you see fighters not understanding how to get themselves out. Yep. And so there's your next progression. Yep.

You better learn that. If you don't know that, you're going to be in trouble. Yeah. And that is the Danaher effect. He is a genius. It's just fascinating, too. But, you know, these techniques that we're talking about, like there's guys, though, that can even shut those down.

I mean, guys who have those understanding of the basics that can shut. I mean, I would really like to see Hodger. I mean, I know Hodger's retiring, which is unfortunate. I mean, fortunate and unfortunate. I get it. He's arguably one of the greatest grapplers of all time, without a doubt. Yeah. And I would like to see him, though, against like a Gordon Ryan.

Wouldn't you want to see that? Of course. I mean, they're both big guys. They're both very strong. And Hodger with that extreme basic game, the school so who are you gonna say would win it i would never say who the fuck knows who the fuck knows i want to see it you know that's the whole point that's why you look at and you get all these oh so and so would win you know what that's why you that's why i always i know some leg lock guys that went and trained with braulio estima and he

shut that shit down and they were like whoa and they were like okay there's something there's something to be said for that intense pressure style that's solid you cannot get those things that you used to do that's where i'm really interested in with look at you know people don't realize how good rafael lavato jr is how could you not oh how could you not because they're not guys that actually live in the jujitsu world they live only in the MMA world. And he fights for Bellator. He can't be any good. He's one of the best in the world. Oh, my God.

And Gerald Harris is a tough guy. Oh, yeah. He's a tough guy. Gerald Harris is very strong, very good wrestler. He was 25, and he's now 25 and 6. Yeah. Lookit, he has beaten some good people. He's got four slam KOs.

He is a monster in certain areas of the fight. And you look and you go, it was the way that Rafael switched that arm. And just the control of the legs. Because you see the leg, his head's getting out. He brings that leg over. You look and you go, do you realize how good that is? Yeah. Well, for a guy like you who's a black belt in jiu-jitsu, you see that.

That's like you're watching art. It is. You're watching art. And I tell people all the time, look it, yeah, I used to be able to roll. I can't roll with that guy. That dude is world class. Yeah, there's a level of like – I was trying to explain this to someone who's like, well, you're a black belt too.

I'm like, that guy would treat me like a white belt, like I'm a blue belt, like I'm just a beginner. And there's nothing wrong with saying that. I'd be a sparring dummy. Well, it's a fact. And that's the whole thing. It's like, why are you going to

sit there and try to say, oh, I could roll it? No. There's facts. There's facts in this world. It is what it is. Like if you don't know jujitsu and you're my size,

I'm going to choke the shit out of you. Oh, you're going to crush him. You don't have a chance. Yeah. But if you're a Marcelo Garcia, you could be 30 pounds lighter than me and I'm fucked. I have zero chance.

Yep. You have to explain this to me. Like you have no chance. I'm like, listen to me. I am defending the entire time. Yeah. I have zero chance. You have to explain to me like you have no chance. I'm like, listen to me. I got, I am defending the entire time. Yeah. I got zero chance. I'm defending up until he gets me. It's not a matter of if he's going to get me. It's just a matter of when does it happen? When do I make that mistake that he goes? Yeah. When you slap hands, you're admitting you're a victim. Like I'm a victim. Just let's just try to keep me

from being a victim as long as I can. There's just levels. And when you roll with a guy like Jean-Jacques Machado or any high-level person, you feel that extreme. It's just like the precision and technique. It's amazing to feel and experience because from the outside looking in, if you don't know jiu-jitsu, you can't see it. You don't know what you're looking at. It's like when you say Jean-Jacques, you feel from the moment you start, I'm in danger. Yeah, there's no space. And then finally you'll get to one point where you can go, you can lock and you can pinch down and people are like, we'll do something.

It's like, dude, I am doing something. I am surviving. I had dinner with Hickson once and Hickson and Krohn and then we went back to the house. It was amazing. Went back to the house, and he put on fights, and he was breaking down fights for me and talking about errors people were making. And he was talking about space. That's what he kept talking about. Look at all this space.

Everything. Look at all this space between all this movement and gap. Space equals escape. And then you'd watch him, and there was the Coliseum fight. Funaki. Yeah, when he fought Funaki, and that was his last fight. And when he fought Funaki, you see this just crushing game where he just gets a hold. I mean, once he's got you, you're not – and he explained it to me.

I'll never forget this. He goes, we start at a neutral point. We start at zero. He goes, and when we go to one, we're not going back to zero. We're going to two and then to three and then to checkmate. He's like, we're not going backwards. We're going forwards. And you're like, Jesus, I'm scared.

I want to run home. But you go and you watch that. And people don't realize how good Funaki actually was. Funaki was a beast. He was the big test for Hickson. And he crushed Hickson's orbital. Remember? Yeah, with that punch. I was swollen up. Absolutely. Broke it. Broke his orbital. I mean, he was a real threat. That's what one punch can do.

And Funaki was a real threat. And Hickson put him to sleep. Funaki was a guy, as far as grappling in Japan, he, you can go on, and again, it's that size thing. Because he was a good size 210 to 15 pound guy. Solid, jacked. Jacked and a good grappler who, you know, you can go back and look at all the guys from the past.

You know, the Satos and everybody that were phenomenal. They all said, well, no one can beat him here. Right. You know, he was that good. And Hickson destroyed him as far as once it hit the ground yeah but that's like it was almost like you know i was talking with jay glazer before the dylan danis fight you know and dylan is in his you know this is his first fight and yes he's saying a lot of stuff i love that hey you got to have confidence in yourself okay and you got to put

it out there but you know jay has asked me he says says, he goes, what can I say? I said, look at this, what you can say about him. It is his first fight. I go, but if he gets his hands around his opponent and they do this, it's over. He will not get out. His opponent will not survive. This is another level. He is that good on the ground. Yeah. And, you know, it's so hard to get people to realize how good certain the ground. And, you know, it's, it's, it's so hard to get people to realize

how good certain people are, you know, and just there, you know, obviously if you get hit and your brain's not working, cause your brain is everything that can be taken away to a point from you. But if your brain is there and you have that submission ability, you're always dangerous. Yeah. It's just, to me, the most enjoyable thing to watch because it's so complex because there's so many variables and it's so interesting. There's so much going on in a fight. There's just so much happening, so many possibilities. And for you as a referee, I mean, you've had, I mean, I always say I had the best seat in the house next to you because I did.

I never got to sit down. Ever. Well, it's better. You could get around. You were looking at the chokes. I got to move to all the best places. You were looking at a choke from a foot away. I mean, you were there for all of it, man.

You got to be there. I mean, you're the only one, really the only one, to truly experience those fights without some sort of a barrier in between them. True. I'm going to go back real quick for you. Okay. So it goes. How did Hickson not get to fight in UFC 1? That was the question, and we didn't answer it.

The question, yeah. We have two questions to answer. This is 12-6 elbow. We'll go back to that. We'll go to that one, too. But let's go to this. Why wasn't Hickson in? Because Hickson was the champion of the family.

Oh, no doubt. By far. And even back then, Hoyce came out in articles and said, my brother Hickson is 10 times better than me. Always said that. And he wasn't lying. Yeah, he said, I will go to train tonight and my brother will tap me 100 times. Yep. You're so good at that.

But what truly happened was, again, and I say say look at the first ufc for horian horian looked at this entire thing people have to understand how or how much time horian had spent trying to get people to understand grappling is an art form that taking somebody down and putting them into a place where they are unaware of what can happen to them, unknowledgeable, is a way for you to be safe in a fight, taking kinetic energy off of their plate and putting you in a place where you could do what you do. And he was trying to sell this the whole time. Then he meets Art Davey. Art Davey is the one that helps put together the Gracie in action tapes. And through that marketing scheme, Horian sees this guy can make me money.

And so then he does. He says, okay, what are you talking about with your fighting thing? And no doubt Hickson is the best one in the family. But Hickson at that time is training people out of Torrance. And then he opens up his own studio in West LA. Ah, Pico. Yes. And when he opened up his studio in West LA, Horian went, whoop, you're not going to,

the person that is going to be fighting in this is going to be representing my school. And that's how Hoist got it. So that was always the rumors that he couldn't control Hickson. Couldn't. Yeah. The other rumor was, there was two rumors. One that he couldn't control Hickson and the other one was that Hickson was like physically very impressive. Yeah. The other rumor was, there was two rumors. One, that he couldn't control Hickson, and the other one was that Hickson was physically very impressive. Ah.

And that they- That's such a lie. That's a lie. Well, it's a lie in the fact- Well, let me just fill the sentence. Absolutely. The sentence was that because he was physically impressive, it wouldn't be as good an advertisement for jiu-jitsu because Hoyce was long and thin, and he wasn't the typical-

But Hickson, when you looked at him like with his shirt off, I mean he had a six-pack and big muscles, he looked like a physically impressive guy. But Hickson was 10 pounds heavier than Hoyce. Yeah. Okay, a little bit shorter. Yeah. Okay, he's shorter than Hoyce.

But if he would have worn the gi, what are you going to see anyways? Nothing. Okay, looks like know guy in a gi and you know that whole thing of horian marketing wise said oh it was because hickson is this big guy and you know i wanted it oh so that was horian saying oh yeah horian's the one that came out with that so he said that just because he needed an excuse for why he couldn't control hickson yep so us as jujitsu practitioners i i started doing jujitsu in 96 with Hickson. I started Hickson school on Pico. Yeah. Louis Heredia, my first class. There you go. And,

but then I took a couple of classes there, but then I found out that Carlson Gracie's was closer to my house. I didn't know Jack shit. No, his was, yeah, his was on Hawthorne right off of, right off of La Cienega. So it was right down the street from the Comedy Store. So I was like, well, this is near where I live. And I was like, Gracie is Gracie. I didn't know there was any difference between the two of them. And Carlson Gracie was always on John Peretti's show when John Peretti had that Extreme Combat.

Extreme Challenge. Extreme Challenge. Battlecade. Battlecade, right. And so I said, well, I'll just go train here. So I stopped training with literally the greatest of all time, you know, because I didn't know any better. But you went to training with the guy that would hold nothing back. Yeah, that's true.

That would teach you everything. Well, also, I went there while Vitor was still Victor. Yeah. He was Victor Gracie. They called him Victor Gracie. In fact, like when I first interviewed, I called him Victor a couple times because we had always called him Victor. And they were calling him Victor Gracie, but he was getting sued by Horian, was saying that you can't use the Gracie name. And so he had to stop calling himself Gracie, and he was going with Belfort, and Mario Sperry was there.

There was like, I mean, that was Carlos Baheto was there. Carlos is a great guy great guy yeah but it was a fucking crazy place to be if you think about the history of jujitsu and of mma i mean it was it was an amazing time have you ever been to his original school in rio no no my god man i it's like you look and it's a dungeon it's up it's an upstairs dungeon but I mean you look and you go oh my god all these guys learning it's it's it's a room it's actually this size wow this size right here and you think about the guys that he had there and what he taught Armory Batesh, Ricardo Laborio, Baheto, Alan Gauche all these guys and you go man that and the one thing out of all of them,

because at least I've been lucky enough to be able to know all of them and talk to them and train with a lot of them, and all of them would, man, Carlson Gracie, I love him. He's my father. He never held anything back from me. And you got to look and you go. That was the thing because I remember I had some friends that went to Torrance and right after Hoyce tapped out Dan Severn with a triangle,

they wanted to learn the triangle. And they were saying, no, you're not ready for that yet. You're not ready for that. Not ready. And Mario Sperry was teaching us like right off the bat. Oh, yeah. Mario Sperry's explaining, I'll never forget this, explaining how he used to practice triangles with his girlfriend.

He used to make his girlfriend sit there, and he would just rotate on her, just left triangle, right triangle, left triangle, right triangle, and he would just practice on her. That's a good relationship right there. Wow, that's a good woman. I'll tell you, because my wife would go, fuck you. Exactly. Yeah, a good woman lets you sync up triangle on her over and over and over again.

Yeah, he would just rotate his hips. He'd be saying, if you can get someone, that's the best way to work on your triangle. He was saying, if you can get someone, it's really just about doing those numbers over and over and over and over again. So he was teaching us that right off the bat. So that is a thing about Carlson. But that place went under. It went under somewhere around 98, and that's when I moved over to John Jock. And I started training at John Jock's since 98.

You didn't miss a beat there, though. No. Got lucky, too. Yeah. But that was the time. I had just started to understand who John Jock was, but everybody wanted that Gracie name, which is why a lot of guys went with Gracie as their last name,

even though it wasn't a last name. Still to this day. To this day. Even Hodger. Hodger's last name. It's not his mom's last name. Still to this day. Even Hodger. Hodger's last name is not his mom's last name. Same with Neiman. Yeah. You know what Neiman's last name is? What is it? Strombowski.

What's wrong with that? It's weird that that's still a thing. That's his dad's last name, but his mom comes from the Gracie side. But it's crazy that the dad must be like, what in the fuck? It's my name! What's my name, kid? That was always a thing.

But then I had started to understand jujitsu then. I'd been doing it for a little while. And then everybody had heard about Jean-Jacques Machado and Higin Machado and the brothers and John. And it was one of those, then Hodger. And we knew that, okay, this is another family that's also like an elite, world-class family. And then we started training them. And there was people saying at the time, oh, the Machados aren't as good as the Gracies. You go, oh, yes, they are.

They're the same. Well, there's just high-level jiu-jitsu, right? I mean, there's so much of it today. And John Jock is the guy. You look at all of them because if you're going to go and you're going to say, well, who was the best if they trained between each other? It was Higgin. He was a monster because he was so big, so strong, and his jiu-jitsu was really freaking good.

Well, there's a great match between Higgin and Hickson. You can still watch black and white fucking wild shit from the 80s. Higgin's doing good for a lot of that sucker but you look at the guy that technically how just different he was in the right it was john jock well one of the things is that john jock was born with a deformity where he only has a thumb on one hand but that's left hand doesn't have any fingers so because of that a lot of people credit john jock with a lot of the overhooks and underhooks that really tend to dominate no-gi grappling. Because John Jock was not

grabbing the gi with that left hand. Look at him in ADCC. Look at what he's doing. He can't grab, but he was taking and putting his hands in ways. And you look and you go, it is. Look at what he's doing. All of those holds that he's grabbing and controlling that person with that instead of the gi. That's what we use today. Well, that's where Eddie learned a lot of his technique. Eddie, you know, obviously Eddie's a black belt under Jean-Jacques, but he learned a lot of

his no-gi principles from Jean-Jacques because Jean-Jacques couldn't rely on the gi. And that's, we always talked about this. One of the things that happens to these gi guys when they come over to MMA, if they rely too much on the gi they they have like half their game like maybe half their game it's one of those things that you know back in the day it was always oh you must train in the gi you got to train the gi if you want to be good bullshit it's not true absolutely not well he used to say this he's like if you want to get good at tennis do you play

racquetball well then it's exactly and this is the point when I talk about Eddie. I go, you know, Eddie was saying that long before anybody else. He's like, I don't believe that you have to train the gi. You have to train. And it's like, oh, no, to learn these. And it's like, most of those don't work if they're not wearing the gi. There's some things about the gi that are really good. Sure.

Defense. You have to have real defense with the gi. You have to really understand position. You can't just muscle out of out of shit well that's the big difference is the gi takes away that explosion explosion in power and slipperiness makes you yeah technically have to do it right yes yes there's definitely benefits to the game oh yeah and it's also great for old guys you can grab a hold of shit and cling and hang on and that's all you do you you had some serious neck injuries right and you're all fused up now right i'm a mess what did what they do to you well about let's say four years ago i had two discs replaced because i uh it was

actually the disc was broken and it was pressing in on my spinal cord. And I had only like about an eighth of an inch between it touching the other side. No, no, no. My spinal cord touching the other side. Oh. Which would have been me going and falling down and not getting back up. Whoa. So they took and they relieved the pressure, took that out and put two fake discs and put this cage around it. Because I didn't want to be fused. I was panicked about. relieved the pressure, took that out and put two fake discs and put this cage around it to, uh,

so, cause I didn't want to be fused. I was panicked about, look at, I need to be able to move my neck. You know, even for refereeing, it was even more past the jujitsu, but I wanted to still be able to do things and rolling and stuff. And then, uh, I got hurt in July of last year, bad. And it was, I wasn't like And it wasn't like someone meant to do it. I was training somebody and having them put a darts choke on me. It was no big deal. But they were doing it wrong as I'm watching them. So I get down and said, look, put it on me. Okay, here, put this here.

No, no, I want you to wait here. All right, start putting pressure down. And I was probably in it for 90 seconds because I'm talking through it. And I'm waiting for them to increase the pressure, increase it, make it tighter. And finally it gets to where, hey, it's tight. Okay. And I tap. I mean, it's good.

All right. You got it. And I didn't feel anything. But that broke the five through seven in my disc and pushed them out. The next day I had. So you didn't feel it while it was happening. I did not feel it when it happened. That's the scary shit about neck injuries. It is. It's like, you don't think you really had

an injury because you're like, I don't remember anything happening. There was no pain. Yeah. I can, I remember cracking when they're putting it on because my neck is, you know, getting, but that's normal. Yeah. And so it was like, that's no big deal. Right. You're used to it. And man, the next day I had this fire going down my arm into my finger that didn't stop. And it was like, holy. Nerve pain. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And, I mean, it was. If you've ever had a stinger from football or smashing your head into something and you get that fire that goes down. And it did not. I mean, from that point I didn't sleep. I was in trouble. i ended up going and i i go and they say uh you've crushed this and so they they went and looked and when they were supposed to you know do the surgery they were going to fuse from five to seven i said all right whatever and they do that well my body itself fused around the cage that they'd put the disc in. So I'm fused from three down to seven now.

So it's all good. I can move a little bit. I can't move back. I can turn it to the sides, though, so I'm good. And so three, where does that start? It starts at the neck, at the top of the head? Yep, right. Just two down off of where your head and your neck attach.

They're doing a lot of those artificial discs. Eddie's got one now. He's got an artificial titanium moving disc. Yeah, I got two of those. It's in his lower back. You got those too. I got those. Are those wrapped up in the cage or no?

That's wrapped up in that cage, which is now fused. So they're not doing anything except they're keeping me from getting shorter again. Jesus Christ. Yeah, Eddie gained an inch. There you go. He went from 5'8 to 5'9. You will.

It's not bad. Because, man, I'll tell you what. It's everything with grappling and jiu-jitsu. Smushes those discs. It smushes you. You get shorter. I've gotten a lot shorter. Yeah, it's definitely.

And people say things like disc degeneration disease. I'm like, slow down. You're getting injured. Okay? You're getting injured over and over and over again. And your discs are getting compressed. And it's not a coincidence that this disc degenerating disease is happening with grapplers in the exact same spots, lower back and the neck. It's all from getting cranked on.

It is. It's from getting guillotined and darsed and fighting your way out of chokes and from your lower back from being in the guard. There's just so much going on. Stacking you up and pushing. There's so much going on with your back. Very few people do anything to strengthen their back i implore people that are doing jujitsu i want you to look at two things three things one the reverse hyper machine that's that louis simmons machine i'm sure you

know about that that fucking thing is so good dr neil reardon the stem cell doctor that i had on before he was having some back issues. He just sent me a picture of one of them that he has now in his place. After he came here and saw mine, he got one of those reverse hypers, put it in his office, and he's like, Jesus Christ, this thing has changed my body. It's like changed my back. It's helped me so much. It's incredible.

That thing's amazing. And then there's a thing called the Iron Neck. The Iron Neck, which is just a phenomenal training tool for your neck, gives you more range of motion and strengthens your neck. So many guys just don't do that. You just train. You just always train. You've got to treat your body like you're in the pit stop and you're in a fucking NASCAR crew. And you've got to fix stuff and replace stuff and make sure everything's tuned up and tightened up and treat your body like you got to strengthen all that shit.

Question. Were you, were you that way when you were 25 though? No, I was a retard. There you go. That's me. I'm stupid still. I can't believe how stupid I am. It's amazing I've gotten so far.

That's the differences when, you know, I don't care. You think you're invulnerable. Yeah. Dude, absolutely. Yeah. No one can do anything to you. You know, you can't be beat. You, uh, you can put up with anything.

Yep. And as you get older. You just go, fuck it, who cares? I'll train the other side. Exactly. I'll just go light. You never go light. Yeah.

And then you wind up having all these injuries that never really heal themselves. You know, like one of the best things that ever happened to me training was something actually breaking. Like I'd have an actual torn ACL. Well, now I can't train for six months for sure. so now it gives everything a chance to recuperate and actually heal and like oh look my elbow doesn't hurt anymore you know there's all these things like I went I told you I got stem cell shots in my shoulder the guy goes you had a shoulder separation at some point in time I'm like really I don't even know I don't know because he gets hurt so much absolutely someone's just cranking you in an Americana or whatever.

And you don't want to tap. And the next day you're back in there again. You're sure it's sore, but you don't know what it is. And after a while it's not so sore anymore. I didn't know you tore your Achilles tendon. I did that. I didn't tear my tendon. Oh, good.

ACL. Why did you say I tore my tendon? For whatever reason, you said ACL and I was thinking Achilles tendon. No, no, no. I did that. That sucks. But the Achilles now, one of the girls

that works at the UFC, Heather, she had it done and they fixed it so fast. They reattach it to the bone now and you're walking around like immediately. Really?

It's fucking crazy. Yeah, that's not the way it was when I did it. No. It's like six months of nothing, right? Horrible. You know what else is crazy now bicep tendon tears

Jeff Novitsky the US you saw the guy he had his bicep tendon torn they replaced that shit They did bolted that shit down to the arm and he was moving around like normal within a couple of days Wow It's like he doesn't have any strength in it So while the rebuild the strength back But it used to be you were in a fucking cast and you couldn't do shit and it took forever to rehab. Now it's like they just bolt things down. There's new techniques now where they can – Dr. Roddy McGee out of Vegas was explaining to me when you tear an ACL in half, instead of replacing the ACL now, they put that ACL back together again. They have new techniques of tying the ACL back together again.

It heals up fully. And they've had guys go back into the Olympics within four months of this surgery. Like, what in the fuck, man? Exactly. We're in a crazy time when it comes to regeneration and the ability to fix things and repair things. They're constantly innovating and coming up with new surgical procedures. So awesome time to get fucked up. Oh, yeah.

I've done a great job of that. My thing, I got to the point it actually atrophied me so bad. I mean, I was like, and my wife would look, she'd go every day. She goes, oh, my God. My shoulders were like, they were concave in the back. Well, you were a giant when I met you. When I first met you,

you had been doing a lot of power lifting. Yeah. And you were three, what were you, three, how much did you weigh? 310. 310.

You were fucking huge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, not anymore. Yeah. Do you roll anymore? I have not rolled since July.

Since that injury. And you're done? No. My wife. Oh, she's here and she's in the other room. Yeah, yeah. She's going to knock on injury? And you're done? No. My wife. Oh, she's here and she's in the other room. She's going to knock on the door. You're done, motherfucker. She'll say, you can roll with a black belt.

Oh, okay. She doesn't want me rolling with people who go spastic. Right, right, right. That makes sense. Yeah. So you were able to work out, though? I mean, I'm slow. It was a point I'd have to pick up my arm to put it up here.

Pat Miletic was here. Oh, same thing. And Pat has his discs fused on their own. That's what mine did around that cage, that bone. But Pat didn't even do it around the cage. Pat's neck was so fucked up, there was no disc left that the bones just grew into each other. I remember when Pat had, he fought, if you remember back a long time ago, Jose Pele Landy Jones.

Oh, yeah. And he had to stop in the fight because Jose was grabbing a hold of a Muay Thai plum, and it was killing Pat's neck because his neck was just jacked. Right. And he couldn't finally get to the point where he was like, I can't do it anymore. And it was all based on injuries. Right. And he couldn't finally get to the point where he's like, I can't do it anymore. And it was all based on injuries. Yeah. You know, he wasn't getting beat in the fight by what was happening by the fighter hurting

him. It was just someone hanging on his neck. Well, I know a lot of guys have gotten their neck really fucked up from can openers. Oh, tell me about it. Can opener is just that technique of opening up the guard. Well, Tim Katalfa was the one that really started bringing out the can opener, and it was Mark Kerr and Mark Coleman. Oh, yeah.

That guy was a fucking gorilla. A big old gray-haired gorilla. Gray-haired gorilla. He looked like a silverback. He was prematurely gray. Oh, yeah. So he had gray chest hairs and a crazy gray mustache and built like a fucking tank. And he was just yanking on things.

He wasn't taking anything. Yeah. Yeah, he was yanking on shit. But Coleman and Kerr, that was their... Yep. I remember Kerr fucked somebody up in Pride, some Russian cat. He got him in a can opener and fucked his neck up. And that was...

Bronco. Yes, that's right. Was it him? Yeah, well, that was the first one that he did, and then he had- It was a Russian guy. Yeah, I'm trying to think of who the second one was. I forget the guy's name, but I remember the guy writhing in agony, holding onto his neck, and I'm thinking, fuck that.

And that was the smashing machine, Kerr. That was Kerr when he was on all the Mexican supplements. He was on everything they ever invented in labs. He was giant. Well, I can tell you, Ben, I rolled with I was rolling with... Why would you roll with Kerr? Did you roll with Kerr? I did not. I never rolled with Mark Kerr. But I rolled with Mark Coleman.

Oh, Jesus. That's not better. Kevin Randleman. Oh, my God. It was funny, you know, because at first we were trying, you know, oh, yeah, we'll just roll on your own. Right. And then it was, well, you know, hey, I've been working on this defense. I said, that's not going to work. And he actually told me, Pat Miletic told me that.

He didn't teach it that way, dude. I'm just telling you. You know, and it was triangle defense because he's fighting in pride and he ended up getting triangled by Minotauro. But he would sit there and he'd put his hand to his forehead. Oh, Jesus. But he was the strongest human being I had ever rolled with. He changed a lot of people's games. People don't realize, like, when Mark Coleman came into the game, like when Mark Coleman beat Dan Severin and just got him in that scarf hold

and cranked on his neck, when people saw what Mark was doing to people, everybody got bigger. Everybody. That was when Vitor went up to like 240. Oh, yeah. Remember that? Oh, yeah. Everybody got bigger because they were just thinking,

one day I'm going to have to fight that fucking gorilla. Like, I just got to get at least 40 pounds bigger. Yeah. I love Mark. At a certain point, he hated me because, you know, look, I changed the rules on him. It was me. The headbutts? Did you change the headbutts? rules on him. It was me. The headbutts?

Did you change the headbutts? Oh, yeah. It was me. See, I like headbutts. Yeah. I think they're effective. So do I. For him, they were very effective.

Oh, my God. He would take you down. Guys would grab, overhook his arms. And he would just bum you. And he would use that big old melon to just squish him. But the crazy thing is when Maurice Smith beat Mark Coleman, headbutts were legal. Yes, they were. They were legal back then.

That was the last one. Maurice still won. That was the last show. That's why I'm in favor of headbutts. It's like there's a defense for them. There is. You can figure it out. Maurice figured it out.

But it's perception, and that's what the entire sport has fought for its entire existence. Well, let me tell you this because I'm beating a dead horse in this. Everybody who listens to this podcast knows I don't like gloves. I don't think guys should have to wear gloves. Tell me why you don't like gloves. Because I think, why should you have padding on your knuckles that makes your knuckles more effective when you don't have it on your shins, you don't have it on your elbows, you don't have it on your knees? Really?

It doesn't make any sense. Your heel? Your heel is one of the hardest parts of your fucking body. Everybody's seen Edson Barbosa. Terry Adam. Fuck that perception. How is it okay to shin somebody in the head? Look it.

Is this perception of the uninformed? Okay, let's go back. We're going back all the way to UFC 8. The way back machine. UFC 8 was the first time that I ended up in court before UFC 8. Okay, because John McCain had come out with this whole thing. And everyone can sit there and say, why John did it? Budweiser.

Thank you very much. You hit it right on the head. Budweiser was sponsoring boxing. Bingo. Okay. I hear all the stories. John McCain did us a favor. Well, you weren't there at that time.

He didn't do us any damn favors. They brought him in because they knew that they needed someone who was very respected to be against MMA. Exactly. Well, you've got to look at the pay-per-views. The very first pay-per-view for the UFC, 87,000 buys. They were hoping for a home run at around 25. They got 87,000. Second one, they were in the 180-some thousand. Then 200,000. Then 300,000. Second one, they were in the 200,000. They were 180-some thousand. Then 200,000.

Then 300,000. To put it into perspective, today, sometimes, like, I think, who's the, there was a fight, oh, Mighty Mouse. There was a fight fairly recently, or Mighty Mouse pay-per-view, where I think it only got 150. You know, let's be honest. I think probably the last one they had, it's not going to be up there. Because there was so many.

Amanda Nunes? Yeah, well, there's so much competition around it. You had Lomachenko fighting the same one they had. It's not going to be up there. Amanda Nunes? Yeah, well, there's so much competition around it. You had Lomachenko fighting the same night for free. And so people look and go, on this one, I can still watch something. And it's not that that wasn't a good card. It's just the matter of- Was that the same night as Bellator? Was Bellator on Friday?

No, same night as Bellator. So you had all those things. And only one of them you had to pay for. Yep. So, right. Exactly. But you look at all of that, man, and it's like, it's crazy. Crazy what happened because John McCain comes out, we go to court in, because Puerto Rico, he sends a letter there and

they try to shut it down. We end up in federal court and they bring in this boxing expert to be on their side. And one of the things I did is, you know, they had gloves and they're talking about, we had no gloves. And I said, you know, and I took the glove and I said, here, I want to do a demonstration for you for the, for the judge. I said, I would like that boxing expert, take your hand, put it in that glove. And I want you to hit this desk, hit it hard, hit it as hard as you can. He goes, crack, take it off, hit it just as hard now. And he goes, well, I said, this is my point. That glove is not there to protect my head. It is there to protect his hand. That is what a glove is for. A glove does not protect someone as far as their brain scrambling or anything. It is there

to protect my hand so I can punch you more. That's what it's there for. A hundred percent. Okay. And if you look and say, if you want to take away some things that go with what's the most traumatic injuries we have in MMA, people are going to look and say all this stuff about, oh, we have, you know, guys breaking our concussions are the most important thing that we have going on. That's the most critical thing we have going on. And if someone gets to punch less because they have to be more precise with where they're doing it and be careful as far as how many times they do do it because they can't continue to do it, you know, in that prolonged fashion, it doesn't make it safer or is it more dangerous for the fighters? But it's a perception.

And this goes back to athletic commissions and everything. It's crazy. But hasn't MMA and UFC transcended perceptions? I wish. But it has to a certain extent. Are you kidding me? You're still talking about an elbow strike. Right.

But the elbow strike thing, let's go back to that. Because we glossed over it. I did a great segue there. You did. It's the first time I've ever done anything like that. The 12-6 elbow strike, was it because, this is what I've always said, and I believe you're the one who told me this, that when the commissions were talking about techniques, they had seen like those karate guys on ESPN at one o'clock in the morning breaking bricks with their

elbows. And they're like, there's no way you could allow that strike because that strike would be too deadly. Was that what happened? Close. Close. When we talk about commissions, there was only a couple of commissions at the writing of the Unified Rules as far as when we came together. That was back in April of 2001. when we came together.

That was back in April of 2001. And New Jersey, I started talking about the UFC was not the first show to go there. But New Jersey, after they had the IFC and then the UFC and then they had a couple other small shows, Ring of Fire starts to come in and everyone has their own rules. The UFC had their own rules. IFC had their own rules. Ring of Fire wants to do their own rules. And New Jersey was like, we can't have these people coming in and giving us what their rules are. If we're going to do this as a sport,

we're going to do this under our rules. And okay, what we're going to do is we're going to bring people together to create those rules. People that are supposedly know what the, who they really invited other than, you know, I think you had the Mohegan sun as far as the tribal commission come down, they were part of it. New Jersey has a commission and you had Mark Ratner on a conference call. He was not there, but it was promoters. This is before Ratner worked for the UFC. This is long before. Mark is working for the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Mark is working for the Nevada State Athletic Commission. He's the executive director. And they bring in all of these promoters. And the promoters were King of the Cage, Terry

Treblecock. You had Dana White, Lorenzo Fertitta, John McCarthy, Joe Silva, and Jeff Blatnick from the UFC. You had people from Pride, Yuki Kondo and Kanda or whatever, and Hideki, I can't remember his name. And you had Paul Smith, you had a couple, but that was it. That was the people there. And the people that were really talking the most were, was me and a doctor named Dom Coletta from New Jersey. He was brought in as the medical advisor for the state of New Jersey. And when it came to elbows, they, brought in as the medical advisor for the state of New Jersey. And when it came to elbows, they tried to get rid of elbows. That was their big thing.

And I was sitting there trying to combat what they were saying because even in New Jersey at the time, they had Muay Thai. And so they had elbows that were allowed in this form. I said, look at it. And Jeff and I had put together a CD at the time. You know, you had CDs with CD-ROM yeah there you go man make it on computer and uh it was because I knew they were going to attack throws because that was what made Larry Hazard you had Tito Ortiz fought Evan Tanner and he picks him up in a body lock and he brings him down and he knocks him out and Larry Hazard went

like his heart started going he's like, we don't like that. And so I knew they were going to attack throws. And so I took with Jeff, put together all of these throws from the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Here's all your throws from judo. Here's all your throws from Greco Roman wrestling and God bless Carellon because he picks people up and drops them on their head and it's legal. Okay. And I had all these throws from freestyle wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, and God bless Carellon because he picks people up and drops them on their head and it's legal. Okay. And I had all these throws from freestyle wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, judo with all of these Olympic athletes picking somebody up and them falling on their head, being tossed on their head. And that's what saved the throws. And what we came up with was, look, what we don't want is someone being able to control another human being

and purposely make a tent spike out of them and try to drive them down onto the mat on top of their heads. A pile driver. Exactly. Like Bob Sapp did to Minotauro in Pride and fucked his neck up for a long time. Yes. And that's, you know. Maybe forever. That was what we were looking at. And so that's how we came up with, you know, no spiking. And spiking, I knew what it was because I worked out the language there. Because I was sitting there saying, well, hold on, time out. I'm the one that's got to come up and say, this is legal, this is not. So we do this.

If someone takes and, you know, a guy shoots a lazy double, he brings his head to the center, picks him up. His legs either go straight up or, you know, his legs are out like this and you purposely hold him there and try to drive him straight down. That's a spike. That's illegal. If I take, and I pick you up as a suplex and I bring you up over the top, I can bring you down any, as long as there is an arc to it. Any arc makes the throw legal. So Rampage Jackson picks up Ryan Bader and spins him and brings him down straight on his head. Legal. And it makes it quick and easy for me as a referee.

I see the arc. It's legal. I don't see an arc and I see him holding him and bring him straight down. Now I know it's illegal. And so I was trying to make things as easy as I could. When it came to the elbows, what they were trying to do was take away all elbows. And I go, look at, you have elbows in Muay Thai, elbows. Every time you take something away, you are changing the sport and making it to where it's harder to actually have action because you take away elbows.

I grab wrist. And if I'm good at grabbing wrist, I can hold wrist for a while and I can't do anything. I've got to pull my hand out where if you grab my wrist and I'm John Jones and I take and I roll that elbow over and boom and bring it down, you let go of my wrist because you're being attacked. And so they looked at it and said, and Tom Coletta, being the doctor, said, he goes, look it. Yeah, I understand what he's saying.

He said, I have a problem with one. And it came from Gan McGee versus a guy named Brad Gabriel from the IFC, the very first show they had. Gan McGee, you remember, 6'11". At the time, in this show, about 335 pounds. And he's fighting a guy named Brad Gabriel who's 6'1", 210, 215 pounds. And Brad Gabriel is trying to get a hold of Gan just to survive.

And Gan is taking his arm and he's boom, boom, boom. And he's bringing it straight down on top of Brad Gabriel's head. And then he gets his back and he does the same thing, like the old Brazilian style of bringing shots to the back of the head. And he said, he goes, I, I've, I can't have that. He said, I see, I've seen them break big blocks of ice like that. That's a dangerous elbow. We can't have that. And I started to combat it. And Lorenzo Fertitta looks at me and goes, John, let it go. It's stupid. Wow.

And I go, yes, sir, boss. And I backed away from it. And so that became. So that's the 12 to 6 elbow. That's the 12 to 6 elbow. And the whole thing with the whole positioning of it, 12 to 6, I came up with that there saying, all right, let me just make this clear. So we're saying that my hand comes straight up and straight down. That's what's illegal.

So 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock. But if I'm inside control and I bring my arm like this, we're okay with it. And they go, yes. And one to seven is okay? One to seven, 1130 to all that stuff. Sort of. 1130 is pushing it. You're pushing it.

But the problem was see i was there i understood everything and i came out and started teaching classes and stuff and if you listen to me you knew what it was but other than that you're getting oh there's a paper written and so you're reading the paper and it says no downward elbow strikes and that's not what the rule was right so we had actually had you know season, season two of The Ultimate Fighter, Joe Stevenson is going to end up, he's in the semifinals. I had done his earlier match. He had fought Marcus Davis, and I went over the rules with him.

And so when we talk about going over rules with fighters, there's a lot that I say. You know, people think that, you know, don't pull hair, don't do that. You don't do that. But I'd gone over things, and I, don't pull hair, don't do that. You don't do that. But I'd gone over things and I explained to him, yes, because he asked me, he says, in the guard, can I do this elbow? Absolutely. From the guard.

You can do it from the guard. Because you're doing it from 6 to 12. Exactly. While you're doing it, it's 9 to 3, 3 to 9, whatever. You're on your back. Right. And he goes and he's going to fight in the semifinals, and he's got Herb Dean as his referee. And Herb

tells him, no, you can't do that. And he goes, but John McCarthy says I can do it. And he goes, no, you can't do that. And so I got, well, and this is the problem with MMA as we have it. Herb says, no, Joe comes out to me and says, hey, you told me that I could do this. I said, absolutely you can. He goes, Herb Dean just said, I can't. I go, I'll take care of it. And I go to Herb and I said, hey, did you tell Joe Stevenson that he can't do this elbow strike? He goes, yeah. He goes, that's illegal. You can't do that. I go, Joe. I said, I'm sorry, Herb. I go, what do you mean it's illegal? I go, it's 12 to six. I go, his hand's not coming straight up and straight down. And he goes, yeah, John. He goes, that's if the clock's on the wall. But if you're on your back and your clock's on the ceiling, he goes, that's 12 to 6.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, this is what happens. And I looked at him and I said, Herb, when in the fuck have you ever seen a clock on a ceiling? And he goes, well, I haven't, but it makes sense. And you have these officials. But it's not enhanced by gravity. Hello.

But it's still, it's even with gravity. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. It's right now. I can tell you. Why hasn't it been changed? Because of doctors and fear. No one wants to be the one to change it. Look at all the controversy we had when we changed just a little bit that we've changed so far. And that was one of the things we wanted to change.

The hand touched the ground. We had it. Yeah, and I'll talk about that if you want. But we had it in there and the doctors for the ABC said, nope, we don't want to touch that. So right now I can tell you. What was their rationale? Their rationale is they don't understand it, and they're afraid to say. They look at the sport, and they look at it from a different view than you and I as people that are a part of it, you and I as fans, any of that, they look at it from,

well, right now, we've been doing this for, we'll say, 20 years, 15 years, wherever you're at, how long they've been doing it. And we haven't had a problem having that as being illegal. So as soon as we bring it into, okay, now it's legal, and we have a fighter that supposedly gets hurt by it, and now they come after us saying, well, before it was illegal, you guys made it legal. That's why I got hurt. And that's what they're trying to avoid. They don't, they're looking at litigation and they're looking at saying, you know what? Why bring that in? There's no point. It's so frustrating. Totally. That's a very frustrating. But right now I will tell you the university of Auburn

is doing a study for us about elbows and the power behind each different type that we're having them do, being that one up and down. So I've already had – I used to do things with sports science, and they've already done that test for me. So I know what it is. Right. But we'll have a university having a test. But we'll have a university having a test, and so now it's going to come out that elbow strikes, all these elbow strikes that are allowed are all much more powerful than that elbow strike. Well, not only that, but forget about power. Because you could take whatever Dominic Cruz's most powerful technique and then use Francis Ngannou's jab.

So are we just saying that you can't have power? Because that doesn't make any sense at all well no because see that's what the whole thing is with that elbow strike right it's so powerful but what about a fucking it's not exactly it's nothing compared to like a wheel kick or a spinning back kick i try to get people to understand you know being a hunter you have an idea of ballistics okay and it's like and people get in this whole thing about, you know, girls and guys and fighting and stuff. And I try to tell them, look it. You cannot expect Demetrius Johnson to have the power of a Francis Ngannou.

Or Stipe Miocic. Or Stipe Miocic. Or Daniel Cormier. Or let's go down lower, George St. Pierre. Giant, heavy dude. He has 125 pounds. We'll say the night that he's fighting, 135, 139 pounds of weight behind it. He is a 22 caliber.

Right. Okay. I'm not saying he can't hurt you, but he's not going to drop you because he just doesn't have that power. Unless you're his size. And you have certain genetics, not genetics, certain components that are coming into play because- Like the Joseph Benavidez fight. Look at what Joseph was doing.

Forced him, brings it, more power based upon movement of bodies. He can drop somebody. Precision, timing. He can drop somebody with a kick because there's more weight and more power behind it. He can drop somebody with a knee. But when we look at lighter weight fighters, we're going to get people, human beings are put together basically the same. Okay. Obviously this guy can take a shot. This guy can't. Okay. That's out there. But if you're a fighter and you get used to accepting damage, accepting punishment, you can accept a lot of things

to a certain point where that person's speed and power come together to create a velocity that will put anybody out. And that just comes with strength and weight and size because the 22 caliber bullet is not like the 45 caliber bullet. Yeah. And no matter who the athlete is, the downward elbow is not going to be the most powerful strike in their arsenal unless they're just some fucking downward elbow wizard. And there might be a few of those guys out there. I mean, in the Thai world, there might be some guy who does one of those tomahawk elbows that just has a vicious one. But for those guys, there's few and far between.

So tell me how that elbow is going to be stronger than a guy with a rolling thunder kick with his heel hitting someone in the top. It's not going to be. Or it's in Barboza wheel kick. Hello, man. There's power that you just can't, from leg kicks especially, from kicks with the leg rather. There's no way you're going to be able to mash that with anything you do with your arms. Never. Never.

Never. Never. But yet those are legal techniques because they've been legal forever and they just don't want to take any chances. There's a comfort level with it. And we've allowed that for this long. That's normal. You know what you're getting into.

And now I start to change it. And look, there will be, I hate to say this, there will be one fighter out there, whoever they are, who ends up saying, well, I'm going to, I have this lawyer who said I can make money and they're going to sue somebody over it. whoever they are, who ends up saying, well, I have this lawyer who said I can make money, and they're going to sue somebody over it. And they're going to say, that was what got me hurt. Yeah. That's why you'll never see like knees to the head on the ground.

Ain't happening. I'm just telling you right now. Not going to ever happen. You don't think so? Never. Never. Never. As soon as one person gets it. It is.

It's a valid technique. It's super valid and you cannot put yourself into positions and this is fighters are always going to work within the parameters of what they have right and they're going to work to how can i benefit from this what can i do to make this work for me i don't care what it is you know it be at the cage the ring you know the technique they're always going to work at making that thing work for them to the best that they can that's their job and i don't blame them that's the way it's supposed to be i'm gonna beat another dead horse because this is something i talk about all the time what do you think about having fights in an open area like a basketball

court and not having a cage. Because I feel like the cage, there's certain things about the cage. There is. It becomes an added factor. Does a ring become an added factor? Yes. And so would a basketball court. To a certain extent.

No, to a complete extent. Because fighters are not stupid. Right. They're smart. But you wouldn't be able to use it to get back up. And you wouldn't be able to use it to hold a guy there. But you would be able to use it to nullify, same as in wrestling. Guys run out of bounds.

Exactly. And, trust me, guys would start doing it. Yeah. To keep themselves safe. Football field. Think about it. Well, think about when you first were at the UFC, UFC 12. Right.

Back then, if Mark Coleman took somebody down, where did he put them? Right against the cage. Head up against the cage. Yep. People didn't wall walk then, did they? Nope. They didn't know it yet. Exactly.

And they got their brains beaten in. Exactly. And then the cage was a benefit for the guy on top. Exactly. Yeah. And now it's now reversed. To a certain extent. Almost. And people are like, oh. Yeah. But now it's now reversed. To a certain extent. Almost.

But the takedown. And people are like, oh. But takedowns against the cage. Takedowns are a bitch against the cage. They are, but. So stop trying to do that. It's also possible to get that clinch when you're pressing up a guy, get the hands together behind the legs.

And you could look at the difference in the cages. Because I'm going to tell you right now, there's differences in. Are you trying to say the Bellator cage is better than UFC cage? No, I'm not. I'll shut these goddamn microphones off right now. You son of a bitch. No, but there is a difference in those cages in that the UFC has what we call a canvas that is an infinity line canvas.

The fencing material is around it and there's an actual gap that, so if you spill ice in the UFC's cage, no problem. You just sweep it into that hole. Some guys have got their foot stuck in that hole before. Absolutely. But they purposely many times put their foot there too. To brace against the takedown. Because it's, now it becomes, instead of me having to pull and having to lift, we'll say

80 pounds of pressure, that pressure becomes 160 pounds of pressure because it's double. I can't do it. Because he's wedged in there. Bingo. Yeah. Guys have fucked their ankle up on that thing too he's wedged in there. Bingo. Yeah. Guys have fucked their ankle up on that thing, too, right? Guys have fucked their toes up. Yeah.

They've done a lot of things, but they utilize whatever they have. But don't you think just for the purity of the sport, a football field would be a better way to go? Just make the guys fight in the middle. And then you'd have guys running and people would be going, what the hell is going on here? People would say, that fucking guy always uses the warning zone. Exactly.

He's going to the end zone. I hate that guy. And there's no perfect. There's no perfect. There is no perfect. What about the way when Meyerowitz came back, remember he had that Yama pit? Oh, yeah. Remember that?

Oh, man. A lot of guys have tried that sort of strategy of having a pit type scenario. Well, Frank Shamrock was the first one. In fact, I was arguing with Josh Thompson about that. It was called Shootbox. Shootbox, that's right. It was first called Bushido and it got shut down. By Pride Bushido?

It was like Pride Bushido as far as, you know, same name, but it got shut down. And then when he reopened it up, it was Shootbox because it never really happened. It was a grappling thing. So it was like a copyright thing. Yeah. up it was shoot box because it never really happened it was a grappling thing so it was like a copyright thing yeah and so he went with shoot box and it did have that it was a more of a square with the raised sides and you know you can go to the you know go to chuck norris's you know world combat league yeah remember the member the surface sure and it was great to watch and it's for the fans as far as viewing it's the. They're doing a karate thing now. Boss Rutten's doing a commentary.

Same sort of. Karate combat. Yeah. Combat karate, sorry. Same sort of deal. Yeah. They're doing it. It's a little bit higher on the sides, on the ramp, yeah.

I like that. Yeah. There's something to it. But trust me, guys are going to use it. Guys are going to use it. I told you, back when Bob Meyerowitz tried to come back with Yama, he asked me to be part of that. And I said, no, I'm sorry, I can't.

And it wasn't that I was trying to be an idiot. And I told him, I said, look it. I said, you can't. And it wasn't that I was trying to be an idiot. And I told him. I said, look it. I said, you're little. Because he was saying, this is going to revolution. I said, no, it's not. I said, that ramp is going to make my. He thought it was going to work against takedowns.

I said, it's going to make takedowns easier. Because if I back you towards it, now I elevate you. That just changes my ability to drop levels. There's the karate ramp. And with a Bitcoin logo in the center. Holla at your boy. There you go. I like that.

I like this. It's great. But again, if you get stuck up against that side, you can't back your foot up any further. It will make takedowns a little bit easier. And now you get into, let's talk about reality. Okay, you look at that. That looks great. It does look great.

It's in a TV studio. Right. Because let's put that in an arena now because all those big money ringside seats. They can't see shit. Bingo. Right, especially if you're up against the edge. Yeah. But that's a problem right now in MMA.

Absolutely. If you watch a fight and you're fucked. You know. Yeah. Sometimes I see guys are fighting. Sometimes you got the greatest seat. The greatest seat in the house next to you. The worst. And when the posts are in the position.

So you went from the greatest seat in the house to the second greatest seat in the house. Yeah. You also went from the hardest job in the business to, in my opinion, the easiest. No, not at all. Commentary's the easiest. No, I want to, look it. And you have set a standard for commentators. And the real thing is, you know, people talk all, you're always going to have people that love you and people that and the real thing is you know people talk all you're

always going to have people that love you and people that hate you and that's just people but you set a standard for the way that you call a fight with the enthusiasm that you truly have for the sport that always made you phenomenal at what you did. It's not only the knowledge that you had about fighting. It was the way you went about presenting our sport. And you made it happen. And you're part of the whole thing of why this sport has gotten as big as it is. And I appreciate that, man. Thank you.

That's very nice. Very nice of you. It's easy. It's not easy. It's an easy job. It's not easy, man. You show up and start yelling, get excited. Well, for me, what is easy about it is that it's natural.

It's that I don't like sports. I'm not a sports guy. People come to me and they start talking to me about football. I literally don't have any idea what they're talking about. When I watch a football game, I don't know what's happening. What's the flag for? What happened? Penalty?

What's going on? Basketball games? I know that when the ball goes in the hole with the rope around it, that's good that's all I know soccer, I have no fucking idea what's going on it looks great, they're running around but I know fighting, and I'm enthusiastic about fighting, and to me, I don't have any room for any

other shit in my head, so when I call fights I mean, that, look, man, I watched every fight this past weekend, I watched the Lomachenko fight, I watched the Bellator I was there all great. I'm Bader King Moe. I watched the UFC fight Amanda Nunes Raquel Pennington I watched everything I will love watching combat sports. It's my favorite thing to watch and that you know that we were talking earlier It's like, you know as a fan. I would love to have I even boxers Everybody in one little that this is the group, this is what we watch for

fighting because I get to see the best against the best. As a fighter, it's horrible. You've got to have competition out there. You've got to have more promotions because the fighter has nothing going for them if there's not other places they can be. And boxing has changed know i still do boxing boxing has changed as far as it used to be so hard to get linares against lomachenko because linares is this right champion and lomachenko is a champion in this weight class and so we're going

to talk about this forever because we're going to build this up, build this up to the point where it becomes Pacquiao Mayweather, and you lost it years ago. And with MMA, people look and they go, I wish there could be cross promotions. And look, there are. The only one that doesn't is the UFC. And you have to understand that. First off, Dana did do that. He did it with pride, and he got screwed.

Yeah, they tried it. Remember when Vanderlei came over and they made this big deal about Vanderlei? No, Vanderlei didn't come over, yeah. But when they made the big deal about Vanderlei fighting Chuck and they faced off against each other. They put him in the cage. They put Sakuraba in the cage. And all it did was promote pride. Exactly.

Yeah. Because Dana gave Chuck to pride. He gave Rico Rodriguez to pride. He gave them fighters that went over there and fought. Especially Chuck when Chuck was really a very big part of the UFC. He just wasn't the champion. He was number one.

He got screwed by it. He was like, okay, that ain't going to ever happen again. You can't blame him. I look and go, I understand why you say screw that. In some ways I guess it can diminish your product. If someone comes from the outside and, you know, goes against your champion, it could diminish your product.

If you want to say that, I don't think it does. Look, it's a matter of people watch fighting, not for promotions. They watch fighting for fighting. It's athlete versus athlete. That's why it's weird. That's why this UFC thing or Bellator thing is weird. Because nobody gives a fuck who Gennady Golovkin fights for. They don't give a shit.

They don't give a shit if it's on HBO or if it's on Showtime. It's like, Triple G's fighting tonight. How do I watch? How do I watch it? But that's the difference between what happened with MMA. I can tell you back before UFC 30. UFC 30 was the first one for Tito's were the owners of the UFC. And I can remember going to, it was at the Mark Edis Arena at the Trump Taj Mahal.

And, you know, they're doing Tito's walkout because Tito was the champion. He's going to fight Evan Tanner. And they're doing Tito's walkout because Tito was the champion. He's going to fight Evan Tanner and it's, they're doing this. They had to actually do this firework display and they had to do it before the show. So the fire marshal would approve it. So you had to pay for it twice,

you know, and it was like $50,000 worth of fireworks. Right. And so it was this whole thing. And he says, Hey, do you want to watch it? And Lorenzo,

I said, yeah, absolutely. And we're standing there talking. And Lorenzo at that time told me, he says, man, I want to be the first promoter to be able to pay an MMA fighter a million dollars for a fight. And I told him that's awesome. He goes, he says, he goes, he goes, we're going to build this up. And he's talking to me. And when he was talking to me, I said, you know, Lorenzo, the only thing I can tell you is, Hey, that everything you're saying is fantastic. I love it. But there's only one thing you can control and that's your promotion. You have the UFC. Cause he, he was talking about Bob Meyerowitz not pushing fighters. He was pushing the UFC more. And I said, there'll get a point where you think you have that fighter, you have them under contract

and now you want them to do this. You're going to set them up for this. And he's like, no, I don't want to do that. I think I'd rather just do this. I said, you're always going to have issues with fighters to a point. It's just, they're looking at what's best for them. And you're looking at what's best for you. And there's got to be always that compromise towards the middle. I go, so you can always control the brand. And eventually that's what he realized is, and he pushed and he made the UFC the brand because it was pride UFC. And he started, you know, from the ultimate fighter, he started having this term where people associated the UFC with mixed martial arts. They didn't say mixed martial arts. They said, oh, the UFC.

It's like Kleenex or Xerox. Right. And he did an unbelievable job with that. That's what his job was, is to build his company. He did. He sold it. And he's a smart man. They definitely did nail it.

There's no doubt about it. Obviously, I'm a giant fan of the UFC and very loyal to them. But. But. I want to see Rory McDonald fight the best fighters in the world. And I think that Rory McDonald is one of the best, if not the best, 170-pound fighter on the planet. There's no doubt.

There's no doubt. No doubt. I mean, you watch his fight with Tyron Woodley. Oh, I did that fight. It was a long time ago. And Woodley's a different fighter now, especially under the tutelage of Duke Rufus. He's just. He's a better fighter?

But Rory shut him down. I mean, took away everything he did. He took away everything he did, and he showed this very, very deep, well-rounded game. Look, and this is another thing that people don't get, is the UFC has a huge stable of fighters. And I will tell you, look, you can. How many fighters does Bellator have in a contract? Probably about 200 to

220 so ufc is going to be about 600 yeah it's quite a bit more yeah and it's in terms of world class there's no competition there's many many more world-class fighters in the ufc but you got michael chandler you got you got some serious fighters over in Bellator. Look at it. You take a look at the 170s. You know who Ed Ruth is? Sure. Okay. Yeah. Ed Ruth's going to be a monster.

A monster. A monster. Yeah. Aaron Pico. How about that left hook again? That's the third left hook. Second one to the body. Kids only had two fights, you know?

Three fights now. I'm telling you right now, they're talking, in fact, because he works out with Freddie Roach. I was with Freddie the other day because they brought back the contender. Remember the contender that was from boxing? They're bringing it back. And so I'm doing stuff there. When is Pico's third fight? He just had his fourth fight.

He just had his fourth? Yep. Why did I think he only had three? He did until Saturday night. Oh, he fought. That's right. He fought Saturday night. He fought Lee Morrison.

That's right. And left Lee Morrison. That's right. And left took him to the body. Yep. Yeah. His left hook is nasty. Huh. You know, Freddie Roach will tell you, John, you know, he'll tell you, Joe, he's the real deal. Oh, he's definitely the real deal.

He could be a champion in boxing. He goes, and I'm not kidding. The kid was Miguel Cotto's sparring partner for Miguel's entire camp. Okay. He goes, I wouldn't put anybody in that's not going to be perfect for Miguel that can actually stay with Miguel, maybe not hurt Miguel, but I wouldn't put anybody in there that wasn't a high level. He goes, I used him the entire camp.

Yeah, he's a super athlete. Scary. Yeah. Scary good. And what, 20? Yep, 21 now. 21? Yep.

Yeah. I mean, he hasn't even started scratching 21 now. 21? Yep. Yeah. I mean, he hasn't even started scratching his prime. Not even in the neighborhood. And he's just a freak as far as, look, this is what he does. He's kind of like the Floyd. He gets up at 2 o'clock in the morning and starts running or working out. He jumps up out of bed and does 100 push-ups.

You go, dude, go to sleep. Yeah. Well, it's a drive. You want to feed the drive as much as you want to feed the body. And that's when you're looking at fighters, it's that drive to get to somewhere and then the ability to hold on to that. Once you've reached that pinnacle, now it's the drive to get excited and to do things. There it is right there. You got to go back to the beginning, Jamie. Just a little bit.

All the way back. It's just highlights. Oh, well, bring it back to the beginning so Jamie. Just a little bit. All the way back. It's just highlights. Oh, we'll bring it back to the beginning so you can see that. There it is. Right to the liver. He throws it. He doesn't throw it wide either. He throws it up the middle, like right to the rib area, right next to the solar plexus.

You got to stop doing that. That's the iron-fisted matador, man. I understand. Let that go. He's a matador. Let that go, Aaron Pico. Kid's a killer, though though no doubt about it i mean look bellator also has bellator kickboxing which i'm a great admirer yep i love that they're they're doing that but on high level and that's obviously scott's original

background yeah you know i love the fact they're doing high level kickboxing too and you know john wayne parr and joe shillings over there and Ray Daniels yeah yeah Petrosian yep Giorgio Petrosian oh is he something to watch see that's what that's what I like when I'm when I'm refereeing him I go thank god I never had to fight you well he's such a master oh I mean Petrosian is doing just some really special things in there when you watch his movement and there's some great breakdowns of his technique online. But if you watch his just footwork and angles, and he's just never there for you.

You know what I mean? He's just one of the masters. He's the Lomachenko of kickboxing. Yeah, he's one of the masters. But, I mean, I've always made the argument that I love kickboxing, but I really would appreciate Muay Thai better. I like the elbows. I like the knees.

If you're going to do just striking, you should be able to do everything. You should be able to clinch. And this is the – in my personal – and I could be wrong, but this is the problem that we have with kickboxing and Muay Thai both is people don't know what they're watching. Right. And then when they don't understand it, same as you said, I don't understand football.

I don't understand soccer. As soon as you don't understand what you're watching, you start to get, eh, I cannot do it. It's understanding. This is what's allowed and being part of it. Now you're invested in it. But if you don't understand what the rule sets are, and there's so many rule sets when it comes to kickboxing,

they've got to come together and come up with one. And if it's the Muay Thai set, fine. Get rid of the music. Because the music doesn't work here in North America. No, the music and also the Y crew in the beginning. Exactly. No one's going to get into that. It's just not going to fly in America.

Nope. I mean, there's some, I don't think it's a bad idea to make some changes for the American audience. Some. You've got, and that's, that's where you get the pushback and the resistance is, Hey,

this is part of our tradition. And I, I totally understand that. I'm not against it, but do you want this to work or do you not? Yeah. Because that's what it's come down to. Yeah. The tradition I get,

I mean, I do get it and I appreciate it and it's nice and everything like that, but people aren't going to sit around for that. They're just not. Nope. We don't have time, and everyone's on Adderall. They want to go, go, go, go, go. They don't want to sit around for that.

Where do you think MMA is headed when you look at the sport? Do you have a sense? I mean, you've obviously been there from the beginning. Do you have a sense of the direction? I have an idea, what I think is going to happen. Yeah, it's everything has got to evolve or it dies. Right. All right.

And when you talk about the evolution, there's evolution for fighters. There's evolution for promoters. There's evolution for fans as far as what they get to watch and how they get to watch it. And all of that has to evolve for the sport to continue to rise and build. When the UFC sold, and this is no disrespect to anyone, look, the greatest thing that the UFC had was Lorenzo Fertitta. I'm just being honest. Dana was fantastic for the UFC as far as his work effort

and the amount of work he put into it. And, you know, nonstop just going after deals, trying to make things happen. Right. You know, he was the workhorse for it. But Lorenzo's the brains behind it. You know that. He's a wizard. Oh, my God.

And the loss of him is great. Yeah, I agree. It's already, you've already seen things. Well, it's also the issue is the price. They had to pay $4 billion for something that's probably worth two. Half? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know.

I'm not a business person. No, but again. It just seems like a lot of money. How did it get, you know, how did it get to that point where they, exactly. Yeah, he's a wizard. He is. how did it get to that point where they, exactly. Yeah. He's a wizard. He is. You know,

and that's, but it is one of those things that you look and you go, all right, things have, they've changed. Yeah. And the, and the way he went about doing things,

because look at the one thing Lorenzo was not afraid of was spending money. Right. Now that's how the UFC survived. You know, that here's a guy that gambled and he was 54 $54 million. $44 million in the hole. And then put $10 million more. Into the Ultimate Fighter. Exactly.

That was a time buy, and he paid for all the production. And it launched the sport. Absolutely. Literally launched the sport. He deserves everything that he got from that, and he deserves that giant payout, no doubt about it. My concern is that the monthly nut is so gigantic that I just don't... I wonder if... Some people say there's too many fights. They say there's

too many fights, too many televised fights, and that this is a part of the problems. It's oversaturated, so it's very difficult to sell the pay-per-views because people are like, no, I'm not going to buy this. I'm not going to watch next week on FS1. There's a big card. I'm not going to watch next week on FS1. There's a big card.

I'm just going to wait for that and not spend my money. You look and for a while there, they were almost competing against themselves with pay-per-views. Yeah. And it was, you had two pay-per-views in a month and you went and said, I'll buy that one. I'm not going to buy that one. Yeah. You can't be in business against yourself.

And they got rid of that. by that one. Yeah. You can't be in business against yourself. And they got rid of that. There's also mistaken, they kind of, especially initially,

did a lot of sort of Hollywood style promotion. Like when I thought there was a real problem was when Ronda Rousey was making her comeback against Amanda Nunes and they weren't even

mentioning Amanda Nunes. I'm like, you guys are out of your fucking mind. Okay. This is the woman that I was saying before Ronda got knocked out

by Holly Holm. I was saying before ronda got knocked out by holly home i was saying amanda nunez is more dangerous she's fucking dangerous man especially see her in this last weekend against raquel pennington like holy shit she's just gotten better and better and better and better and her fucking conditioning is off the charts which was always a problem for her in the past yeah not anymore she would come out like a gangbuster and she would fade. Yep. She's not fading anymore. No.

Fifth round, she was coming out guns blazing. She's a monster, man. She is. She is a fucking monster. So when I was backstage, I don't know who it was, but I remember this guy talking. And he did not know who Amanda Nunes was. It was some agent. And he said, whoever she is, she's cannon fodder.

And I remember just going, what in the fuck are you talking about? How can you say that? They were hyped up on that video that they made where Ronda's like, Ronda's back, and she's in this mansion, wandering around her mansion, and watching Amanda Nunes on TV. I'm like, you guys are out of your mind. You're out of your mind because it doesn't matter how many hype pieces you make. She's still got to fight Amanda fucking Nunes.

That woman is, she's so good. And her fucking power in her hands is like nobody else in the division. Oh, I mean, she's so physically strong and fast. And that creates power. It's a matter of. Raquel Pennington. You look at her fight. She's a tough girl. Raquel Pennington. You look at her fight. She's a tough girl.

She's tough as fuck. You look at her fight with Holly Holm. I mean, that was the first fight for UFC, in the UFC for Holly. It was a fucking split decision. Yeah. Raquel Pennington's world class, and she is about as tough as it gets.

She is. Let me ask you this. What did you think after the fourth round when she said, I'm done? And her coach was like, no, you're not done. You get back in there. You get back in there. You get back in there. You're going to power through.

You're going to. What did you think of that? It's wrong. Yeah. And I'm telling you it's wrong for this. We as fans, as humans, we put way, way too much emphasis on the importance of a fight. Okay. Now, it's a fight.

on the importance of a fight. Okay. Now it's a, it's a fight and it's important to that fighter as they step into that cage for that, you know, first round. And it's important for them as long as they are mentally capable of enduring what is occurring, because you know, fighters go through evolutions during the fight. They're strong. They're weak. They're doing well. They're not doing well. And once a fighter tells you, I'm done, it's gone. You're expecting her. Let's look at what you really have. She lost four rounds in a row.

Bad. She lost four rounds in a row. And the fourth was a particularly brutal one. Her nose was shattered. Nose got crushed. Blood was pouring out all over the place. And, you know, again, for people to understand, let me break your nose and now let me punch it again. Okay.

You have no concept because what I'm telling you is, you know, during a fight, fighters don't feel pain the way people think because there's adrenaline and there's all these things and it's muted. You feel things and sometimes you really start to feel them. And as soon as you really start to feel them, you start to lose really bad. And in that situation where she had lost four rounds badly. Okay. So what's going to happen in the fifth? You think she's going to come out with this home run shot? Okay. Okay. If her mind is still there, maybe it can happen. But as soon as she says, I'm done, I want out. Hey, it's a fight. And did she receive more damage after that statement in the fifth round? Oh yeah, she received more damage. And what I'm telling you is it's like, you can have the greatest car in the world. All right?

You can have, you know, I'm not a real great car guy, but a truck. The Raptor, Ford Raptor truck. You can only crash it into the wall so many times before it says, fuck you, I'm done. Okay? And is no longer a nice truck. It's a piece of shit. It doesn't work. Exactly.

And the real question is, how much damage did you do for the rest of Raquel Pennington's career? Because she took extra damage and you never know when it is, Joe. And I can tell you, I can, I can pick out fights where I can tell you, this is the difference in that fighter from this fight. And that moment, he is no longer the same. She is no longer the same. And so as the trainer, what are you there for? You are there to get your fighter ready for the fight. You're there to be the person that's helping them during the fight and giving them instructions and telling them how to attack this person and saying, you're doing this wrong.

I need you to do this, whatever it's going to be. That's your job. You are there to sometimes motivate them when they start to lose the belief that I don't know if I can beat this person. And that happens to everybody. I don't, I don't know if I can actually, this person's kicking my ass to be that person. Hey, you're doing fine. What I need you to do is this, you know, get yourself together, be that motivator. But once the fighter tells you, I'm done, Hey, that's the mind's gone. It's over. Don't put them back out there because they're not going to perform. They're not going to do well. They can sit there

afterwards and say, oh, you know, I'm glad that I went out there. It didn't change any. What, what changed? The only thing that changed was the amount of damage that she incurred. That's it. She defended her coach after the fight, but most people would. That's fine. She believes in her coach, and she said it was the right decision. But most people that watched that said they should have stopped the fight

right when she said that, and I agree with you. And I think, especially when you're dealing with someone as tough as her, for her, for Raquel Pennington, I'm a giant fan of hers,

for her to say i'm done like you got to respect that when have you ever seen her quit never okay never what's it telling you she's battered and beaten down and that can happen to anybody yep anybody anybody look at you know i mean it's so hard to get people to understand you have no idea how hard these people are being hit you know people people get this idea of oh i could fight with an mma you have no idea how hard these people are being hit. People get this idea of, oh, I could fight with an MMA. You have no fucking clue how good they are. They are dangerous people, and they hit with power. Especially Nunes.

I mean, she's a freak. Well, when you're cage side or ring side in a fight, and you actually not only see that shot, you hear it. Yeah. And you hear the actual impact. It's telling you, do you realize how hard that just hit that person? Yeah. And they're walking through a lot of those, man.

And you go, God damn, they're tough. Yeah. That's what I tell people about in Gano. I'm like, you think you know what it seems like when someone hits someone really hard, and then you see Francis hit people. And you go, oh, Jesus. Yeah, he's a game changer as far as his power. Yeah, some new thing going on with that guy.

Some new thing. Some new thing. I mean, a guy who's got a cut weight, a natural guy who's got a cut weight to get down to 265. And when he hits you, you literally can't take it the only guy has been able to do it right is stipe but stipe's done away from everything but stipe's done it yeah and this going into that fight man and this is one of the ones you know the ufc they were hyping the hell out of steve out of uh yeah francis and i go man you are not hyping your champion and i'm telling

you right now if this fight gets out of the first round, Stipe's going to win it. And I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but it's, look it, Stipe is the more complete fighter. And look at the guys that he's fought. Mark Hunt destroyed him. Okay, do you think Mark Hunt can hit? It's like

it's not like he hasn't fought guys that can frickin' bang. Junior Dos Santos. Boom! And destroyed. Fought him twice. Overeem. Got dropped by Overeem.

Came back and knocked him out. Okay. So he's demonstrated what he can do. But you got Francis, and he's got that almost Mike Tyson type of mystique about that power. And I understand. Look, you just don't see guys hitting uppercuts that snap someone's head back. Mine can't even do it. I would say for that fight, that was more impressive than anything Tyson ever did. Because he knocked Overeem into orbit.

Oh my God. Overeem was completely unconscious, toes curled with one shot. In a way that you just don't see. Michael Spinks. Yeah. Remember that one? Spinks had already been dropped. I mean, he dropped Spinks and had him hurt, and then Spinks got up and he hit him with

that right hand. That was real similar, but there's something about Francis' power, and obviously you're dealing with four-ounce gloves, but you're dealing with a way bigger man, too. Absolutely. He's 40-plus pounds bigger than Mike ever was. Oh, yeah. Well, 275 the night of the fight. Easy.

Compared to no bigger than, not even that. Probably, right? 218 at the most, somewhere in there. Yeah, I mean, look, obviously completely different sports, and Mike's one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, without a doubt. But there's something about Ngannou's power that's otherworldly. Oh, yeah.

It's freakish. Like, you see people get hit, and you see this look on their face. They're like, oh, Jesus. But you've had that same look, no matter if it's you're doing kickboxing, sparring, or you're grappling with someone, and all of a sudden someone's doing something, and you're like, holy shit. Yep, yep. There's some holy shit people out there, man.

Oh, yes, there are. There's some next-level people. Scary people. But what makes you think, like, what would happen if you got a guy like a LeBron James, like a real super athlete, and they got invested in MMA the way Aaron Pico is. I'll tell you what. He might be too big. There was a guy named, I want to say Golston.

He was a safety for the frickin' 49ers. I can't remember his first name. I'm an idiot. But I was doing training with a bunch of NFL players and MMA guys and just getting NFL guys to do martial arts-type training to help with their flexibility, help with their strength, help with their conditioning. And Frank Trigg was one of the guys there.

And Golston was – I had him doing arm bars, just swinging hips left to right, left to right. You know, keep it for core. And he's doing it. I said, no, this is what I want you to do. Every time you grab this, I want you to take this and I want your legs to do this and I want you to squeeze. Right? Just, you know, basic stuff.

And he starts doing it. And Frank goes, God damn it. Thanks, John. Right? And he's getting cracked. I mean, it's pressure. and then we'd go and we're doing kicking exercise and i got him up against back i said i want you to take your foot and i need you to rotate on the ball of your foot i need you to do this your foot's going to come right

here and i want it to end up here and he starts cracking this bag and joe i'm like oh my god could you imagine if this guy wanted to fight i He got real training. Oh, my God. Is that him? Is that you talking about Vernon? Not Vernon Golston. Look at that guy. Jesus Christ. He was a safety for the 49ers and then went to Tampa Bay.

Let's just gaze at this man, Sazik, for a few moments here. Jesus Christ. What in the fuck? All men are not created equal, ladies and gentlemen. They must be brothers because they look... Yeah, no, there's some next level...

Jamie, how much do you think LeBron weighs? Right now, he's like probably 250-ish. Oh. Six foot eight. So he's not even too big. He's been as much as 280.

Oh, no, no, yeah. So he's not even too big to fight heavyweights. Oh, no, he can fight heavyweights. That's a good question. What do you think about that weight class, like the 265 weight limit?

Shouldn't heavyweight just be fucking giant? Yeah. Just should be as big as you can get. Yep. Yeah, why is that? Because you look and there really should be something between 205 and, well, there is. Okay, let's bring this out. Right now, there are weight classes that aren't being used.

Right. Okay, they're out there as far as they are part of athletic commissions. They're approved by the ABC. You've got 165. Mm-hmm. Okay. California started this, I believe? Andy Foster?

He started it as far as- I'm a big fan of that guy. Yeah. Look it. He's outstanding in what he does. He's proactive. He's trying to make things right for fighters he's a martial artist too absolutely fought yeah be boxed he fought mma

he had a good record yep you know he's done it all and he's he's officiated he's done the entire thing so he's fantastic for the sport of boxing and the sport of mma but when you're looking at everything that you know as far as weights you know we went and said, look, there's 10 pounds between 25, 35, 45, 55. Why are we jumping 15 pounds? Okay. Let's, because we have all these guys making these cuts and there are those guys that are the tweeners. You know, if you want to say, you know, Kelvin, is he a tweener at 170 to 175? Probably, right? Yeah, he is. He can make the 175 weight.

He can't make the 170. Well, he can. He can't because of the way he does things. Yeah, he has and he can. He just can't do it the way he likes to eat. Exactly. But he could do it with the things he likes and be at 175. Yeah, I agree.

But this is where, you know, the UFC is the most powerful entity within MMA. And, you know, look, they've done a ton of great things for the sport. But they've also done things that have held the sport back. Like what? Weights, weight classes. Because as soon as we start to come up with, hey, we're going to do this, this is going to be a rule change. They're the first ones to go, what? Well, we forgot that UFC used to have the weight class was 199.

It wasn't 205. Exactly. Yeah. We changed a lot of shit. When we first did the unified rules, Tito Ortiz was the light heavyweight champion at 199.9. Yeah. And as soon as the unified rules came in and we said, okay, that weight class is 205, Tito

Ortiz was the light heavyweight champion at 205. Right. Why don't they do that? Why don't they have some new champions, have some new championship fights? Because you have people that are in a position, you know, it's like Dana. You know, Dana doesn't know. Okay. Dana's told things by people because he can't know everything.

And when he hears that, oh, they're talking about new weight classes, he doesn't make a comment about it. He goes to his people and he says, hey, is this a problem for us? And you have Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard are the two matchmakers for the UFC. And they have enough problems as it is with their getting everybody to the fight and making sure that fight happens and stuff. And the guys are pulling out and stuff. And they're going to tell you, oh, we don't want that. Right. Because you're diluting my weight class now.

You're not diluting your weight class. Just move that person here. Move this person. You're putting them in. But they're going to say that you're diluting it and you're making it too narrow for them. And so they don't want that change in the weight class. So Dana goes, we don't want changes in the weight class. Okay. The sport of MMA needs changes in the weight class because there's so many fighters out there that look at when, when we make changes, the change is not for the UFC. The UFC does not have to have that weight class if they don't want it. They can sit there and say, and the reason that the

170-pound weight class stayed and remained is because of the UFC. They said, okay, we'll agree to bringing in more weight classes, but we want to keep the 170 because they didn't want to move Tyrone Woodley and they didn't want to have to move their champions. It's not a big deal. But when we do a change to the sport, it's to the sport. It's not to the UFC. It's not to Bellator. It's not to one.

So is Bellator adding weight classes? Bellator hasn't added those either. Why haven't they added them? That's the promotions right. The promotion can sit there and say, right now Bellator doesn't have a 125-pound champion. They're doing the heavyweight. They don't even have a heavyweight champion, which there will be after the Grand Prix tournament. So there's a 55.

Now there's a 65 that's available. Did they move the 70 to 75? 70 is still there at a 55. Now there's a 65 that's available. Did they move the 70 to 75? 70 is still there at this moment. So right now you have a logjam. But is 75 legal as well? 70 is legal. 75 is legal. 65 is legal.

55 is legal. I feel like 10 pounds is legitimate. Yeah, I think it's perfect. It is. The jumps between like 85 and 205 and then 205 and heavyweight is 265. That's crazy. See, but this is where you get into this, you know, everyone gets back into the, well, Hoyce Gracie fought guys that were bigger.

It's like, stop. They didn't know any better back then. It's a different world. They were clueless. Yeah, it's a different world. When you talk about size now and when the skill level is the same and the size is different i can tell you who's going to win that fight the big guys yes 100 okay just about every time so when you look and you said if i went and said okay let's take a look at brock lesnar versus randy couture okay brock lesnar is

coming in weighing 265 for the for the scales and he's 285 at least for that night. Randy Couture's coming in, he's 224 for the scales. That's what he's going to be that night. Okay, so we have, eh, only a 60-pound difference. Okay, so if I sat here right now and said, okay, I'm going to take Demetrius Johnson and put him against Chris Weidman, Yoel Romero. Okay, you'd look at me and go, are you fucking nuts?

Okay? Yeah. Because, well, that's stupid. But that's reality of what we do at times in the heavyweight division. So we do need something that is between that 205. Sort of. You do have smaller heavyweights. But you're dealing with the percentage of the body size.

It's a far greater percentage of the body size going from 125 to 185 versus – Your biggest percentage is going to be in that 155 to 185. You've got more fighters, 145 to 185. Right, but what I'm saying is someone fighting someone who's 60 pounds larger than them when they're 125 pounds is a way different thing. Percentage-wise? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

But it's that same concept. Right. I could sit there and move it up to 45. It's still ridiculous that you have a 205 to 265. You have a 60-pound weight class. It's a crazy weight class. It's crazy. But it should be off of, you know, you got guys that are smaller heavyweights that cut

so much weight to get to light heavyweight. Right. Okay. And that it's not healthy. It would be better at 225. Absolutely. So create a 225 and then everything else is heavyweight. So 55, 65, 75, 85, 95, 205, 225.

You get a little bit of a gap there. And then heavyweight. And then heavyweight should be fucking heavyweight. Whatever you are. Whatever you are. Yeah. You know, the big heavy, heavy, heavy guys, they're not going to do well anyways. Like Valuev.

Remember that guy who fought in boxing? Huge boxer from Russia. He was like seven feet tall. Seven one. Yeah. Gigantic, huge anyways. Like Valuev. Remember that guy who fought in boxing? Huge boxer from Russia. He was like seven feet tall. Seven one, yeah. Gigantic, huge dude. He was a monster, yeah. Who beat him? Did David Haye beat him?

Yeah. Did he? I was... Was it David Haye who beat him? I believe David Haye beat him and somebody... Which is crazy because David is relatively small. I think Evander Holyfield even fought him. Did he?

I think Evander fought him. Oh, that's right. I think he did. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, that guy was almost, well, not almost.

He was too big. His body didn't work right. Look it. There is a point of no return. Yeah, no return. You're going to go down from that point. Yeah. And to be a big guy, you can accept more punishment, but you can only accept it for so long.

Yeah, he lost to David Hay. That was his last fight. Hey, Vandervoorted David Hay. There you go. See? Wow, he David Haye. That was his last fight. Yeah, he beat a Vander Holyfield. He beat a Vander Holyfield. There you go. See? Wow, he beat a Vander Holyfield. But he beat Holyfield in 2008. Yes.

That was a different Holyfield. That's a different person. He beat John Ruiz. Yeah. Wow. Clifford Itney, Larry Donald, John Ruiz. Yeah. Interesting.

He went through some people there. Yeah. Because he's so big. He's a tough- Yeah, I mean, just so big. Tough body to push against. Yeah. It's just so big.

But, I mean, it would be interesting to see what would happen if you let Francis Ngannou power lift. You know? Think about it. And, again, you look at this and you go, hey, I would rather see Francis Ngannou not cutting weight at all. Right. What is your way? You know? And being healthy.

My weight's 290. Being healthy and stepping in that cage. This is the thing people don't get is when we talk about weight cuts, you talk about boxing and MMA. They're two different sports. One, I will tell you, MMA is more violent than boxing. Okay? More violent because you can pick somebody up six feet off the ground and drop them down onto the surface.

Okay, you can pull someone's arm back to the point the elbow hyperextends. Okay, and to the point where it actually dislocates. That's a more violent, but more damaging is boxing. You mean overall career? Career-wise, more. Exactly. Because you get hit inwise, more. Exactly. Because you get hit in the head more.

You got two targets. I got two tools, two targets, and 90% of those blows go to the head. But when you're looking at boxers or MMA fighters, and when we have problems with the weight cuts and we have problems with subdural hematomas, it's always the smaller fighters. And it's because they lose so much weight that it becomes a problematic thing with that fight where their brains are dehydrated. It pulls away from the dura. You have all these things that can happen with bleeding and it cannot stop it. And we get problems from it. So let's try to get guys in closer. Incredibly unusual for a heavyweight to die in the ring. And in fact, I think that guy who fought Luis Ortiz, remember that Russian cat?

Magomed. Yeah, that was about three years ago, maybe? Yeah, that was in New York. And that guy got really, really badly hurt in that fight. And that was one of the rare situations where a heavyweight experienced serious brain bleeding and got rushed to the hospital. He had his cheek crushed in the second round. Imagine fighting and having a heavyweight boxer punching your face when your cheek is broken and crushed.

Just everything in that. And this is where sometimes corners, you are there to protect your fighters sometimes from themselves. Yeah. They are so tough that they're going to keep going. The problem is the stink of a no-mas, you know? Yeah. And especially in boxing, look at it.

Think about it. When did that fight occur? Yeah. And it's still talked about 40 years later. It's one of the things that Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather were saying during the fight. Floyd Mayweather said, there's no tap-outs in boxing. There's no tap-outs in boxing. Listen, dude, if you got

an MMA, you'd fucking tap out. Oh, yes, he would. You'd either tap out or you'd go to sleep or get your arm broken. You don't want either one of those things to happen. No. Yeah. Just stop. Talk is great, but... It is. It's great. I will give them credit as far as the way they hyped that fight. It got out of hand at some point. It was exciting.

But you gotta look at some of the things that were done. Craziest was at the weigh-ins, Connor with a boner in his underwear. I don't know what he did to give himself a boner, but he's got at least a three-quarters boner. He's got a chub. He's got a chubby. And he's screaming at him in his face like, whoa, what is happening here? He was being attacked from both angles.

Yeah, but it didn't help in the long run. Ah, you knew. Yeah. Come on. Anybody didn't know. What did you think about all that crazy talk about, Dana said it's 100% bullshit, but the crazy talk about Conor and Floyd fighting in an MMA cage with boxing gloves, no kicks, no takedowns.

Ridiculous. No submissions. It's ridiculous. But you can clinch. It's ridiculous because the clinch is going to do you what good in that you can dirty box and you know i'm going to tell you connor has the ability to dirty box better than floyd because floyd's not used to doing it yeah it's a different element but look at if you're going to come into another man's sport quit trying to change the rules yeah just, just come into the sport. Connor went into his sport.

He didn't change any of the rules. Now, he did some things illegally. I'll give him that. He's hitting him with hammer fists. He's doing things. You go, you can't do that, Connor. But for the most part, he's following those rules. For the most part.

Okay? All you'd have to do is just say no takedowns and no submissions and no grappling. I said before the first one. Go ahead. Before the first one, I said, no, I don't want to see and no grappling. I said before the first one. Go ahead. Before the first one, I said, no, I don't want to see Conor boxing. I said, tell you what, let's make it halfway even. Yep. Kickboxing.

Yeah. Okay? No takedowns, no ground, but he gets to get kicked. Yeah. It would have changed that fight. Oh, fuck yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But, you know, Floyd's smart. I don't blame him for doing what he's doing. He's a money-making machine. He's smart. He's not going to do anything stupid. No. If anything, he'll wait for some other boxer to get really popular or other MMA fighter to get really popular and box him. Smart man.

I mean, he literally might not ever box a boxer again. I mean, he made his biggest payday ever fighting a guy with zero professional fights. Well, zero professional boxing fights. Pretty crazy. It's absolutely crazy. What was his payout? What did they say overall? It was like something more.

$300 million. $300 million? That's a good piece of change. That'll tide him over for about two years. And I'm not even kidding. That guy spends money like water. It's crazy. He does.

He's crazy. It's fun to watch, though. It's fun to watch him That guy spends money like water. It's crazy. He does. He's crazy. It's fun to watch, though. It's fun to watch him spend all that money, too. It's like, Jesus Christ. You know, I watch him spend it. I cringe. Yeah. It's like, oh, I can't even believe you're paying that money for that.

Why? It's like every boxer like that goes broke. They all go broke. It's just a matter of time. That's what I don't want to see. Yeah, but don't you? No, I don't. Isn't it kind of fun?

No. Is it terrible that he has to get a job like regular folks? Is it terrible? I mean, what is terrible? There's something about that, right? If you go to a fucking job site and you see a guy who's working

as a finished carpenter, you don't go, oh, that poor guy's got to work as a finished carpenter. You go, hey, man, what's going on? He goes, hey, how you doing? Everybody's fine. Everybody's fine with that.

But if that guy used to be Floyd Mayweather, and now he's working as a finished carpenter, you're like, look at that poor bastard. Got to hammer those nails down. No, no, no. What's it like? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hit that.

Oh, smash that nail. You fucking loser. You used to be on top of the world. Shouldn't have spent all that fucking money, Floyd. Right? Isn't that weird? There's a weird thing that people do. I used to work with a guy named Mike Corey.

I remember Mike Corey. Corey? Sure. And Mike was a professional boxer. Light heavyweight, right? Absolutely. Fought Bob Foster for the light heavyweight title. Back in the day.

I used to dig holes with Mike Corey. Wow. I used to do plumbing with him. And he was a great guy, but he was a mess. Punch drunk? Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah. I used to do plumbing with him and he was, he was a great guy, but he was a mess. I mean, oh yeah, absolutely. And his brother was even worse, but you know, I couldn't, he couldn't, you know, couldn't wheel a wheelbarrow. Didn't have the balance and coordination to do anymore. But if you put him in and I would spar with him, we'd go in and we would, we would work out and you put them in a ring and all of a sudden he'd start to bounce. He could fight still.

It was just part of who, that ability to do it. Those pathways are just deeply carved. Yep. Wow. And it's, you know, but it's sad because, you know, he ended up leaving that

and he ended up going, he tried to become a haircutter. Tried to become a barber. Hairstylist? Yeah, he tried to become a barber. Whoa. He tried. He about cut his thumb off you know all day

and you look and you go it's sad it's like he had to do those things well what's sad though is that he's physically damaged and he can't move right and can't talk right and all that stuff but is it sad that he has to work a regular job no that's not sad but it's sad when you look and you say he could have gotten away with that

if he just saved all that money. If someone was smart enough to tell you back then, look it, I want you to take this much and put it here. Right. Maybe you wouldn't have to be doing this today. And you look at his whole thing, the way his dad was with him and the things he went through. You look and you go, I feel bad. I feel bad that you're having to come in here every day like I am, but after what you've done in your life and the status that you actually had at one time, I feel bad.

Yeah, you feel bad. But if he was just a regular guy, you wouldn't feel bad. That's where it's weird. It's fucking weird. It's a weird thing, right? It is. We elevate people. But it's also nobody really wants to work right very few i love work not a regular job i don't know yeah but

you're working at bellator you're a fucking commentator stop okay stop hold on i want you i told you that's easy i want you to think about i have this is my third career yes okay i was a police officer you loved that too okay i loved it i had a ball doing it. And then I had a career as a referee basically. I loved it. I still do. Don't think that I wouldn't like to go and still do fights and stuff. And I'd watch a fight and go, damn, I wish I was in there. Why can't they let you do both?

That doesn't make any sense to me. If I was running shit, I would absolutely let you do both but this is the difference is you know mma and boxing are set up completely different than any other sport as far as how they're run you know the nfl you know this is what i tried to say this with you know people wanting to come into officiating for mma And the big questions I get is, oh, how long will it take? How much can I make? Okay, my first response is, get the fuck away from me.

Okay, because you don't get it. And I tell guys that are doing it, I say, hey, let me explain what this is to you. And you get paid for doing what you do. And I don't know what it is and I don't it's, you know, you, you get paid for doing what you do and I don't know what it is and I don't care, but you deserve it. But tell me what it's like for Joe Rogan to walk into an arena, some of the biggest arenas in the world, Madison square garden, you know, T-Mobile staples, no one stops you. They don't fricking hold you back. You get to walk anywhere you want in that

arena. You get to walk to the cage. If you want to walk in the back and go to the locker rooms, you can do that. No one stops you. You don't pay a dime for it. And you get to sit and watch the greatest fights in the world. It's good gig. Hello. It's priceless. It's priceless. Yeah, I enjoy it. And it's exactly because you love the sport and And it's not about how much money you make. It's about being a part of something and being able to do something that other people would give their left fucking nut for. You know, and the other one that I'm talking to him, I was like, how much have you done to prepare yourself for this? Because look at, I started doing stuff back when I was a kid. Now, I didn't do it to prepare to be an official.

That just fell into my lap. But all the stuff that when I was a kid. Now, I didn't do it to prepare to be an official. That just fell into my lap. But all the stuff that my dad made me do, okay, doing anything that had to do with combative sports. And then from there, continuing on and then meeting Horry and Gracie and going and learning that. And all of that set me up to have the ability to be successful at this sport where I tell people all the time, look, let's, let's look at the NFL. You want to be an official and you want to do the Superbowl. Great. Because the UFC is the NFL to fighters and to officials. Okay. It should be, but they're looking at it and they go, I get people all the time saying, Oh, I could do that. You know, I would be great. I know I'd be,

I've been watching since the beginning. And you go, you have no fucking clue because if you wanted to do this in the NFL, how would you go about doing it? Well, you'd start off in peewee football with little six-year-olds, eight-year-olds doing, you know, officiating on the weekends. And you would do that for a couple of years. And then you graduate to a higher level. And then finally, you might even get to high school. And from high school, you might even get into junior college. And junior college, you might start doing Division III, Division II. You might make it to Division I. And by the time they call and say, hey, do you want to come here and start to do summer league for the NFL? You've put in 15 to 20 years of officiating and of going through problems and situations and everything.

And that's the big difference that people don't get. Even the athletic commissions, they all will have somebody that has been their guy at their state who is well he's there for all our small shows and you know he's always you know he's always available and he's always doing stuff so we want to give him that bigger shot the UFC's coming here we want to put him in that main event fight and you go don't do it to him because they have no concept that when that official steps into that octagon for that very first prelim fight, their heart rate's at about 145 beats per minute, just standing still. Why? The adrenaline's flowing and they're scared. They're scared because, oh my God, I can't make a mistake because now I got all these eyeballs on

me. All right. And that's where you get all of that knowledge is doing the small shows and going through time and seeing, you know, having problems yourself, seeing other people have those problems. How do they deal with it? Talking to other officials, what do you do in this situation? That's where that experience is going to help separate you from the other people. And when the bad thing happens, you make it look easy. Sometimes it's not easy. Sometimes you don't make it look easy.

Sometimes it just is a mess, but it's that experience that's going to get you out of the problem without everyone wanting to take your head. Yeah. It's always an issue or it was an issue for a while, at least when we would go to a new town and they would do local guys and the local guys would have to referee. They wanted a certain percentage of local guys refereeing fights. And local guys would do big, high-level fights and make gigantic mistakes. Yep. And separate guys when they were working and separate guys when they were on the ground. Yep. And people would go crazy.

Yeah. Including me. I would go crazy, too. Well, that's because you're expecting a certain level of competence in doing that job. And, well, I've seen it done this way multiple times, multiple times, and all of a sudden, boom, something different. Now it goes, whoa. Right.

And arbitrary, subjective decisions that affect professional fighters' careers. It's just not fair. If I went and I put you with officials, I said, all right, explain to me when you stand somebody up when you don't. Right. They're not going to do a good job of it. Yeah. Okay.

I'll tell you exactly why I do it, when I would do it, why I wouldn't. Right. They're not going to do a good job of it. Yeah. Okay. I'll tell you exactly why I do it, when I would do it, why I wouldn't. Okay. Because you get, you know, there's positions and you know what they are. When a guy takes somebody down, it's not easy to get somebody down. Okay. Now, if I'm the guy getting taken down and I close my guard, grab a hold of him, gable grip, pull him in tight. Let's see.

What am I doing? I'm stalling. I'm the guy underneath stalling this fight. Try to get stood up. Because I wanted to get stood up because I have a referee that's going to stand me up because the crowd starts to go, boo. Well, I'm not being fair. If I'm the referee in this situation, I'll never stand you up. I'm going to give that guy in the top position all the time in the world to get past what you're doing as long as he's working trying to do it. It's when

he starts to stall in the top position and not try to do anything and just sit there. Now you're stalling too. Stop. Stand up. But from a lock guard, what submissions do I have? Nothing. What did you think of this past weekend with John Fitch and Paul Daly?

Where Paul Daly was yelling out, boo, boo. You know. That was a strange, strange scene. What is it? Come on, to you, what is it? He was very frustrated with his inability to stop John Fitch's game. Yeah. John Fitch's game is obvious to everybody that watches.

He wants to take you down a pound. That's what he always does. Was there any doubt in your mind what John Fitch is going to try to do in that fight? Okay, so if you're Paul Daly, is there any doubt in your mind what John Fitch is going to try to do in this fight? And is there any doubt what Paul Daly is going to try to do? Exactly. Right.

Okay, so because the fact that I can't stop what he does, now I'm just going to sit there and I'm breaking. Mentally, I've broken. I can't stop what he's doing. And so I'm going to try to, was he booing about the matchmaking? He booed about everything. He booed John.

He said, you know, you're not fine. He booed a Bellator. He booed the crowd. He booed everything because, you know, there's that point where we all,

you know, I can't get out of this. Why doesn't Paul Daly just kickbox? You know what? I talked to him before the fight, and he seemed like he was, you know, mentally better off and he was happy. And you look and you go, hey, you know what you're getting yourself into. I mean, here's a guy, when you look at it, Joe,

he really has 32 knockouts in 40 victories. You know what he's going to do. Yeah. Okay? And he is explosive. He's got a fucking left hand from hell. When you look at it, Joe, he really has 32 knockouts in 40 victories. You know what he's going to do. Yeah. Okay? And he is explosive. He's got a fucking left hand from hell. Exactly.

Dude. Holy shit. Man his left hand when it hits you. And I don't care where it hits you. It hits you in the top of the head. Yeah. You even block it. Yeah. So you know what he's going to do.

And it's like, if you don't want to be that guy that can be taken down, stop doing this sport because this is part of the sport. Right. It is not a matter of, well, I want to be able to fight standing up because it's more exciting. Have you ever talked to him about this? I have. What does he say? He goes, the grappling is boring.

Then stop it. Wait a minute. The grappling is boring. Well, why doesn't he just kickbox? Hello. And he has. He has. He kickboxed when they had the dynamite card. Yeah. But why doesn't he just do that? I mean, he has. He has. He kickboxed when they had the dynamite card.

Yeah. But why doesn't he just do that? I mean, he's a fucking dynamite striker. He is. He's a phenomenal, phenomenal kickboxer. But there's a difference. You know, you can take some kickboxers out there, okay, and put them in an MMA fight. They're in trouble.

Yeah. But man, you put them in a kickboxing fight, those dudes are phenomenal. Yeah. And just the fact that what they do, they cannot do in an MMA cage because the ability for them to be taken down, it stops them from trying to do some of those things. Of course, yeah. Well, with Paul, Paul is that guy. He's the high-level striker in MMA. Put him in kickboxing against some certain

guys hey you know what there's guys out there they're gonna he's gonna wish he could go to the ground you know let's just be honest he's that guy he's kind of in the middle he's a tweener yeah you know man i just phenomenal fighter but i feel like if he fully concentrated on kickboxing maybe that would be the thing yeah it just me, it doesn't make any sense. Like, I was watching that. I was like, man, this is like career implosion, watching him boo everything. I felt bad for him. I really did.

You know, and I felt bad for him not because he was losing the fight. Right. I feel bad for him that, you know what, you're making such bad choices. That was a bad choice. Bad choice. The booing thing. I mean, it's just ultimate frustration. And it just makes you look bad.

Yeah. I mean, he's just stuck in this situation where he just doesn't seem like he can get out of it. Yeah. You know, and look at when he, in the end of the first round and when he went after John, hey, no one's sitting there saying, stop, let's put you on the ground. Right, of course. Okay, because you have an advantage here. You're utilizing that advantage. Good for you.

Yeah. But John fought the exact fight that you would expect him to try to fight against a guy like Paul Daly. I mean, it's amazing that John is still swinging. He looked better. John looked better physically, mentally, everything. He had a lot of problems. And I talked to him about those problems. He was messed up.

His neck was completely screwed up. He actually switched. He talked about it. He goes, I had to switch to a Southpaw to fight Jake Shields because if I got hit standing right handed, I got hit. My head went that way. He goes, my entire arm would go numb and I couldn't feel it. Whoa. Yeah. And there was a lot of things he says, he goes, I've got all that fixed and he did, he's fixed it. Not through surgery. He had doctors telling him you need surgery and he's done it through physical therapy, exercise and nutrition that he believes. He goes, I don't have the same problems anymore.

He said, he goes, I was taking, I was utilizing a lot of marijuana to take care of pain. I don't do that anymore. You know, he's a, that's a pity. Well, I know he tried veganism for a while, but he said it made him feel weak. And then he went back to eating meat, and he said that really made him feel better. And then I know he'd gone through a bunch of things, but I wasn't aware of his neck injury. Big time. So it was a bulging disc or something along those lines? Yeah, he had a stenosis and bulging disc and big problems with he would get hit and his entire side would go.

Fuck. And how did he fix that? I mean, what, you know, in talking to him, he said, I've, I started doing a nutritional and he says, I take like 40 different pills a day that he's, I wish, I wish I could remember the guy who said, you don't mean medication,

right? No. Yeah. Supplements, nutrients, supplements for, you know, bone things and,

and opening of, of, uh, blood vessels and all these different things. I'd love to hear about that. it's really interesting. It is interesting. And it's great that he was able to find that person that what this guy told him to do has worked for him. Well, you know, Jake had gone through a similar situation.

He had a back injury and the doctors were telling him to stop fighting. They were telling him, stop fighting, stop grappling. Well, that's a doctor's thing all the time. You can't do it anymore. Yeah, you're done. You know, and you can sit there. I saw the Vinny Pazienza movie. Stop grappling. Well, that's a doctor's thing all the time. You can't do it anymore. Yeah, you're done. I saw the Vinny Pazienza movie. Actually, I didn't.

But I know the actual scene. I know what actually really happened to Vinny with the broken neck. Yeah, I mean, they told him, you're done. He's like, no, I'm not. He went on to have some of his best fights afterwards. Absolutely. Yeah, but then again, sometimes you are done. I mean, it's hard to make that distinction. Like, when do you know when your body is broken to the point of no repair?

Well, you know, it comes down to everyone. I don't care who, you know, you, me, anybody. You know the difference between you physically now at the age of 50 compared to what you physically could do at the age of 30. Yeah. You know, there's a big difference. And just, you know, father time's undefeated. That motherfucker. Speed starts to go and everything starts to go.

Mentally, you're way smarter now. Well, that's why TRT was so dangerous. Yeah? Like the TRT Vitor days. Oh, yeah. You got a guy who's 37 years old. Much smarter. Who's also hopped up on applesauce and throwing fucking wheel kicks at people.

And there's just a different, he was a different animal because he had so much knowledge behind him, but his body was moving like a young man's body. Yeah. Which is interesting. It's like you're hacking father time. You've got all that knowledge, all that wisdom and discipline. Look it, the more knowledge you have, the better off you are. Yeah, for sure.

And I have a whole lot of old Vitor stories when he was young when, look at it, he was mentally – God gives everybody certain things. But very rarely does he give them everything. Everything, right. But physically, he blessed Vitor. Physically, Vitor was fast. Oh, yeah. He had good strength. He was – balance-wise, he was great.

The speed was incredible. But up here, that was where he was lacking. It wasn't that he was stupid, but he lacked confidence. And he would have to have people telling him that he could do stuff all the time because he never believed in himself. Later on, he started to believe in himself. He matured. And that's what a successful person does.

Yeah, I mean, that's a thing, too, that people have to realize. Those low points in your life where you don't believe in yourself, that doesn't define you. That's just you at that moment, and you can improve on that. So many people just go through this life thinking who they are is who they will be forever. No, who you are is what you make. Yeah, I mean, if that's the case, I'd still be that fucking idiot who I was in high school. I was a big idiot. Everybody was.

I'm embarrassed by the stuff I used to do. Of course you should be. I mean, it's like, Jesus Christ, what an ass I was. Especially people that have a lot of energy, right? You have a lot of energy and enthusiasm. You make giant, colossal mistakes, and then you're like, bleh. And then you think about yourself, you're like, is that me? You're not even the same person you were a year ago.

No one is. If you're paying attention and you're learning from life's mistakes and life's decisions and all the trials and tribulations, you should theoretically at least be improving in the way you approach life every day. You really should be. Should be. And then with fighting, those things are highlighted because you only fight if you're lucky two three times a year you know unless you're you know jeremy horn and he was fighting all over the place and you know or travis fulton who i think travis is well over 200 fights now right he's still fighting well he fights boxing i've done i've done boxing matches crazy

how many fights that guy has it's crazy and he And he seems fine. He is. That's nuts. Ah, that's genetics. There's certain people. I don't care what anyone wants to say. Oh, it's true. There's certain people that are predisposed. If they get head trauma, they're going to have problems. Yeah.

And there's certain people, dude, you could hit them in the head with everything you have for as long as you want, and they're just going to be fine. Yeah, there's certain guys that one or two knockouts and they're basically done it's just one or two that was freddie roach look at you know if you go back and use you know eddie futch was freddie roach's trainer eddie futch was the trainer for joe frazier during his you know like thrill in manila against Muhammad Ali. Eddie Futch is the one that pulled Joe Frazier out of that fight when he was winning the fight in the, between the 14th and 15th round. Right.

When Muhammad Ali was going to say, I can't go back out there. Right. And Eddie Futch, because Joe Frazier couldn't see, says, you're done. I'm not going to let you back out there because he cared. Right. And that's the right thing. But he was the trainer of Freddie Roach. And Freddie Roach, I think, was 14-0 when he lost his first fight.

And you watch at that point when he gets knocked out, Eddie Fudge told him, son, you're done. You shouldn't fight anymore because he's seeing something in him. Now, Freddie Roach goes, you're crazy. I've lost one fight. And he goes with somebody else and starts to and but he progressively goes down yeah his box goes away and he probably saw something in the gym as well he did absolutely he did because it's every day that he's with me you can see it

yeah you know and it's a hard thing man because you know you care about that person and it is part of your livelihood you're working working with them. You do get paid through them. But you do care about that person. You don't want to see them go down. And that happens. How's that for you when you were being a referee and you were seeing guys who probably shouldn't be doing it anymore? Kills me. People, when it comes to refereeing, what they don't understand is you're responsible. Okay. You're that last level of responsibility for the fighters. The matchmakers put the fight together.

You know, the promoter promotes that fight. The athletic commission approves that fight and then puts you in there with them. And, you know, I can tell you there's sometimes they give you what I call a shit sandwich. You know this is bad from the beginning. But you deal with it and you handle it. But what people, what fans don't understand is, you know, as a referee, I never cared. There's only been one time that I ever cared who won a fight. Okay? One time.

What was that? Murillo Bustamante versus Matt Lindland. I screwed up. Oh, yeah. That versus Matt Lindland. I screwed up. Oh, yeah. That was a crazy one. I screwed up. Explain that. And trust me, from that point.

Well, I'll explain it real quick. Matt Lindland got caught in an armbar, tapped, said he didn't tap. You listened to him. You said, okay, go back again. He's like, Jesus Christ. And then you realized you'd made this big mistake. Huge. Matt Lindland, who was a great competitor,

but maybe perhaps a little bit overenthusiastic about the outcome, was willing to bend the rules a little bit. Well, and that's his job. I don't have a problem with that. Sure. The problem is the referee who is not decisive. Right. So you had made that error.

I saw it too bad. Yeah. Because I second-guessed myself. Right. And I said, oh, my God, it was an attempt. Because he was so enthusiastic about Adam and about the fact that you didn't tell. Exactly. And John, I did not.

And it was like, did I make a mistake? Right. And at the time, I couldn't. There was no instant replay. Well, I couldn't put him back in even the same position. Right. Because at the time, if I interfered with the fight, the rules said that I must put them to their corners and restart the fight. Wow.

So you just ate it. Oh, yeah. You just ate it. I ate it. Murillo ate it. And I felt horrible for that. Well, Murillo fortunately came back and caught him in a guillotine. Went another full round, I believe.

It went into that next round. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I felt, dude, to this day, that still drives me crazy. Murillo's a guy that people forget. Oh yeah. Who was one of the very best guys. Carlson's guy. Another Carlson guy. Yep.

But just phenomenal jiu-jitsu. Just, I mean, when he was in his prime, when he was a UFC middleweight champion, he left the UFC as the middleweight champion, I believe. Nah. Did he lose the title in the UFC? Yeah, I'm trying to remember. Who did he lose to? I feel like he left as champion.

He might have. I think he left as champion and went to Pride, if I remember correctly. I'm foggy on this. He got beat by Dan Henderson in Pride. Yep. Yeah. He might have walked out, walked away and gone there. You're right.

But he was. Remember when he fought Big Tom Erickson in that fucking one-off? That started. See, they're right there. That fight, people talk about the rules in that fight. There's a rule because of it. When you sit there and you have a fighter, you had Tom Erickson being the big 290-pound wrestler. He was fucking huge at the time.

The big cat against Murillo. He goes to the ground with Murillo and goes, fuck that. I'm not going to be on the ground with this guy. I'm in danger. He gets up and decides, I'm going to be a boxer. And Murillo's like, I don't want to stand up with that. That dude hits hard for a two. He may not be good with what he's doing, but he still hits hard.

He hit very hard. Remember when he knocked out Kevin Randleman in Brazil? Oh, yeah. Oof. Tom Erickson fucking banged. Oh, yeah. But Murillo is chasing him on his butt. And Erickson's backing away. And it looked horrible.illo is chasing him on his butt and Erickson's backing

away and it looked horrible. So we said that was when we came up with, look it, we've got to have one fighter in control of it. The person that's standing, if they back away from their opponent, and to this day you watch fighters, you see the referee coming, you've got to get up. That was like a

30 minute fight, right? Wasn't it? It was one of those crazy ones. It was like a three-hour, I mean, not a three-hour, 30-minute fight, right? Yeah. Wasn't it? It was one of those crazy ones. Yeah. And it was horrible, but it taught us a lot. Wasn't that the same event where Oleg Tektarov up-kicked, or Henzo Brasi up-kicked

Oleg Tektarov and KO'd him? Mars event. Yes, that's right. The Mars event. Mars. What would that stand for? Martial arts reality super fights. Why do people like acronyms?

I don't know. I tried to get away from an LAPD because that's all they did. Well, because the UFC is so good. It's such a good acronym. That's not even an acronym, though. That's just initials that people use. You're right. You're right.

It's not like Mars. Yeah. But what is it called when it's not an acronym and it's three? It's just an abbreviation? What is it? I don't know. It's like NFL. What is that called? I forget that an acronym and it's three? It's just an abbreviation? What is it? I don't know. It's like NFL. What is that called?

I forget that word. I just learned it recently. I never know that word. But people just try to recreate something like that. They try to, the IFC or whatever the fuck. They try to come up with something. Well, you talked to Lorenzo and his thing was, in the end, I bought three letters. I bought the UFC.

And the octagon. I mean, to this day, right? Bellator has to use a circle. Circle's better. Someone's talking shit. No, that has nothing to do with... That has nothing to do with... That has nothing to do with...

You talk about your basketball court. Well, any corner creates a problem. I get it. So the circle at least is there's nothing different in any section of that to where those two points come together for the octagon. I can see that logic. I still – look at it. The safest environment for fighters is actually the cage because it contains them.

The safest environment for fighters is actually the cage because it contains them. If you watch Bellator kickboxing, you see that what they do is they do a kickboxing and an MMA show in the same night, same day. I was just going to say that. I think they do the best ring for boxing. And why? The guy can't fall out of it. When Bernard Hopkins in his last fight against Joe Smith, he got knocked out and fell through and hit his fucking head on the ground. It was a terrible loss. I mean, this is a guy who is one of the greatest of all time.

But you look at the ropes compared to the end of the – Not much space. It's ridiculous. But whereas the ring sitting in the Bellator cage circle, there's plenty of room. Everything. So you fall through the rope, it's all safe. Yep. Yeah, I agree.

I think it's smart. But you'll get promoters that don't want that because it takes away seating. Oh, yeah. Space on the ground. Monsters. Yeah. I agree. I think it's smart. But you'll get promoters that don't want that because it takes away seating. Oh, yeah. Space on the ground. Monsters. Yeah. Monsters. It's crazy, but that's the way they are.

Well, listen, Big John, I'm glad we finally got a chance to do this. It's been a pleasure to be your friend. It's been a pleasure knowing you all these years, and you are the OG of OGs. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Let's do this again sometime. Absolutely. For sure.

And congratulations on your success with Bellator. I appreciate it. Let's do this again sometime. Absolutely. And congratulations on your success with Bellator. I think you're doing a great job over there. I'm happy they're doing really well, too. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it, man. Big John McCarthy, motherfuckers. Respect. Thank you.