The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #90 with Rashad Evans

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

Joe sits down with former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, and a 2019 inductee of the UFC Hall of Fame, Rashad Evans.

Three, two, one, boom. You tell a lot about a man, whether or not he's one of those dudes that has one of them wallet phone cases. Rashad Evans, you're a wallet phone case guy. You pack it all into one package. You know what? I wasn't always a wallet phone case guy. It's kind of something that just, you know, I kind of evolved into. I was one that was carrying around the man purse for a while. And after a while, I kind of transitioned to just the the wallet case that's a lot of work though look how thick that sucker is it's like a costanza look at that thing i know and there's a thing giant every single time i clean it out i tell

myself i'm not going to put any more cards in there except for the ones i need but it just attracts the card yeah that's a problem I have one of those Ridge wallets. You know what those are? Yeah. Those are the shit because you can't really get much in there. I get like a credit card or two and my license. And that's it. See, that's what I need. I need to have that discipline where there's nothing else to carry but what I have to carry.

And it's got a little money clip on it, so I'll shove a couple bills in there and that's it. That's it. I go out like that. That's what I need. That's what you need. Front pocket. All this nonsense. and that's it. That's it. I go out like that. That's what I need. That's what you need. Front pocket. All this nonsense. That's so thick.

It's thick. You might as well go back to the man purse. But you know what? You might as well get a backpack or a fanny pack. I'll send you one of these. I just sent two to Stipe Miocic. Those look all right, though. That's pretty dope, right?

Yeah, it is pretty dope. That's my own company. Well, we don't make them. We buy them from Roots, and we put our stamp on it yeah leather right you might want to go for you yeah i do all right yeah you're a bold man you can wear a fanny pack yeah you know i was rocking i was rocking the man purse before anybody else is wearing it i mean out in america out in europe they were doing a long time ago but in america i was like one of the i was a trailblazer i like to say at least among my friends

it is a weird thing right like guys are not supposed to wear bags but women have like fucking all these different brands of bags

they carry around Fendi and Gucci and this and that and it makes you look like you're special because you got some fancy bag

and carrying a bag actually helped me be more prepared than ever because I mean I would always be one of those dudes can't carry enough stuff and i'll always become things wishing i had things that i didn't have and i'm like you know what the bag worked but why is it that we're afraid to carry a bag like a guy can carry a backpack backpack's fine i guess you got

got shit to do you got a backpack you're fucking serious all right it's got two straps right but one strap like man what's wrong with you i think it's because you have to to do the the the feminine hold at times with with the one the one strap yeah and i can but dudes do over the shoulder so you don't have to do that then you're like it's because it's a then it's mainly then it's manly then it's, right, how a bag became manly or not manly based on the amount of straps. I set that in line. Yeah, and then for women, it's like a status symbol. Like what kind of bag they're carrying around. Nobody gives a fuck what kind of backpack you have.

Right? Right. If a dude has a nice backpack, no one's like, bro, where'd you get that backpack? But I mean, you got a nice- Fanny pack? Fanny pack. Sort of. Not really. where'd you get the backpack you know i mean you got a nice fanny pack fanny pack sort of not really it doesn't get the respect it deserves fanny it sticks out the people like okay he's got enough balls to carry fanny pack yes there's a little bit of that a little bit of that you know a little bit i don't give a fuck i've seen a fanny pack carried where it's across the shore that looks kind of cool people weak people you don't

think it's got it no they're scared to rock a real fanny pack. Like, with the waist. Yeah, they're cowards. Cowards. They're cowards. They're fashion cowards. They don't want anybody calling them out on wearing a fanny pack. So, no, no, no.

It's a shoulder bag. It's not a shoulder bag, bitch. You have to wear it right in front. It's a fat man's fanny pack. You're wearing it over your shoulders. That's what it is. They're wearing it in a way you're not supposed to wear it. It's like if you wore a backpack around your waist.

People would be like, what the fuck are you doing? It's not a backpack. It's wrapped around your waist. What are you doing? You think that, Karen, here you have everything you want right here. What about right here, man? You don't even have to lift your hands up. You go like that.

They're right in there. Yeah. You know what? I guess I'm just trying to say it how I think I would wear that one. But you're kind of convincing me, Joe, that maybe the front carry might be the way to go. It's the way to go. The only issue is girls won't fuck you. That's all right.

Some girls, like, you wear a fanny pack. That's it. See, I'm married anyway, so I'm good now. Beautiful. Perfect. Yeah, I'm good with that. Every married man, like myself, every married man like myself every married man should have a fucking fanny pack it's deterrent

pussy deterrent yeah it's a little bit of that but it's also fuck you that's what it says fuck you I carry my own shit

right there keep my shit right there that's hilarious yeah keep it together keep it together and then you also have this crazy green drink

that you were telling me about yeah yeah yeah so this right here is spirulina ever since I changed my diet up i need to have a couple of these every single day and it uh makes me feel good you know yeah yeah i don't i don't eat meat anymore so i know you're big meat yeah do you eat fish or any of that no nothing all vegan all vegan when did you become vegan uh probably about man i want to say probably almost two years now really yeah almost two years now you like it i love it really it's changed my life man it's been it's been one

of the things i can honestly say that's just revolutionized my my complete everything it's it's it's it's been everything that that's um lately that has you know changed me from a mental standpoint physical standpoint and even a spiritual standpoint i definitely think it changes the mind because this all meat diet that i've been on that changes your mind the other way it makes you more aggressive yeah too much so yeah i have to work out extra to keep the keep the demons at bay blood it is it's that it's also like if you think about it if you if your body thinks okay i have to eat animals all the time because all this motherfucker eats his animals right if your body thinks that your body's going to sort of take on the characteristics of something that's a predator right you would become more i mean this is obviously like some bullshit bro

psychology because i'm a moron but i would would say your body is going to think I'm more aggressive. I have to chase shit down and kill it. Yeah, that's that's you have to be more predatory. But your body has to think that way. I can get with that. It makes sense, though. It makes sense. Did you do it right after you retired? You know, I kind of not right after I retired.. It was kind of something that kind of just happened. Like, ever since I, like, because I do mushrooms, right? Uh-oh. Yeah, yeah.

So it was when I did a, like, when I had a really, really deep trip that just caused me to have one of those ego deaths. that just caused me to have one of those ego deaths. And when I had the ego death, I was like in a state where this knowingness was coming to me. And it was like, you know, I was like, it was all day. I did a mushroom ceremony and it was all day and I was just out in the sun and just, you know, in my own mind. And then I was smelling real bad and then I smelled myself. You know how you catch a smell of yourself then I was smelling real bad. And then I smelled myself. You know how you catch a smell of yourself? And I was like, oh, my God, I stink.

And then the knowingness said, like, you stink because you eat dead, rotting flesh. And it said if you want life, then you eat life. That's what this knowingness said to me. And then I was like, that's a strange thought that just come into my mind like that and then after that no kidding like i just lost my taste for meat it just and i used to eat all kinds of meat i would eat i would eat pork and and i was you know big into pork and big into like all kinds of meat and i was never one of those diet guys at all but after that happened to me after i had that experience it was just like one of those things that um that i just couldn't help but go into like i just lost the taste for me one trip yeah i mean well it was well it was it kind of started when i um like about eight months before

that i did the toad and then the toadad was one that really was the catalyst for everything. There's a lot of people listening going, what the fuck is he saying? You did the toad? Yeah, yeah. So five MEO DMT, which is the toad. And the toad was one that was, I guess, the catalyst of busting that gate open. That's a crazy psychedelic. That's a very underrated psychedelic.

Oh, my God. That will. Yeah. That's the first really. gate open and that's a crazy psychedelic that's a very underrated psychedelic oh my god it that that will yeah that's the the first really but i had done mushrooms before but i did a fairly small dose i mean fairly small in that i could walk around i was pretty whacked out but i could walk around a couple grams but the 5meo dmt was the first one where i just ceased to exist i just stopped and it made me really aware of ego really aware of like even the way I express myself the way I would frame sentences and say things I was just I was trying to sound cool yeah I was trying to portray something in a way like not

just trying to portray the information but trying to to impress people. And it made me like feel real gross. Yeah. Well, that's, that's the thing. Like when, um, I had my five MEO experience, it was, uh, man, I just never, I never thought that, um, consciousness could be so vast and so big. You know, when I, when you, when you have that experience with the 5meo it just like it made this consciousness make look as if like it was a drop in a bucket you know just like a little drop and i got to experience the ocean of consciousness and that right there was

it was the most humbling experience i ever had you you know, just to feel my ego, who I thought I was, what I thought I was, completely just annihilated. And to feel what I actually was, you know, it was crazy. Yeah, I feel like regular consciousness that most of us exist in most of the time is a veneer. It's a very thin veneer. the time is a veneer it's a very thin veneer and through some things you get a taste of what's under the surface through meditation and yoga and all these different methods that people use holotropic breathing you get a taste of what's underneath the surface kundalini yoga apparently kundalini yoga apparently i've never really done it but some people say you could really trip out if you do it in a certain way for long periods of time.

People have very intense psychedelic experiences akin to DMT. Yeah. I had like a kundalini kind of experience, like an awakening where it was like a – I just had – it felt like the top of my head just completely was gone. And it was like I was just open to all the information. It was crazy. It was like I had no head. I was just, information was just pouring into me.

Like no roof. No roof. Was this from Kundalini? No, it was from mushrooms but it was a similar but but i felt but i felt that um that that kundalini experience where you see the light it was like this really intense light that that happens in in my head and it was just boom you see you see the universe you know well you know that um that thing about the center of your head that's what the there's there's a lot of speculation what the

egyptians were trying to draw when they were drawing certain images but there's certain temples that seem to mimic uh certain certain shapes in these temples that seem to mimic the pineal gland like even the eye that there's that's that famous Egyptian eye that has that sort of dip down in that weird sort of Egyptian shape. There's been a bunch of different scholars that have tried to figure out what exactly that meant. And one of the theories is that that's a cross section of the pineal gland. And they think that what they were emphasizing was that that is the area where the brain

produces all the psychedelic chemicals. And they speculated this for a long time, but Dr. Rick Strassman, he's the guy that wrote that book, DMT, The Spirit Molecule, and there was actually a documentary on it that I hosted. And he's done a bunch of work with this Cottonwood Research foundation where they've shown now that it exists in live rats and that it that it is actually produced by that gland that dmt is actually produced in these animals by this one particular gland that they associate associated with spiritual awakening with the third eye so it actually is a real thing that feeling that you get and the thing about

mushrooms it's really interesting is mushrooms actually mimic natural human neurochemistry there's five meo dmt there's nn dmt and then what mushrooms the what's processed to the way the way it uh your body processes it becomes something called four fox for a loxi and n dimethyltryyltryptamine. So it's a real close. Real close. I might have butchered that technical description. But it's real close to human neurochemistry. So your body absorbs it very easily.

Your body takes it in. Your body knows what it is. Your body knows what to do with it. See, when I was, I like mushrooms because of mushrooms. So the 5-MeO is so powerful that you can't really get a handle on what happened. Like I came back from being away for like 17 minutes. I'm just like, whoa, that was intense. You know, I felt as if like I was everything the larger extent, because you're dealing with, you know, concepts that the human mind can't even grasp because there's that leads to the ocean and it helps me understand how i am part of something so big and something so grand so when i when i did my much when i have my mushroom experiences they were all different in some in some respect you know like um like whenever i i do go deep because i like to go deep i don't I don't I don't play around with like the two

microdosing yeah micro I mean I do microdosing sometimes but I like to get in there with like five grams you know ten

that's how you know what's up yeah those big ones the big doses where you you get kind of scared once you ate it and then you know

you got like 40 minutes before it kicks in you're like oh boy there's no turning back now there's no turning back now turn it back now and that but that's the thing about it when you face that that fear of just going deep and and it's helped me out so much because you know towards the end of my career like i just didn't

i didn't finish the way i wanted to you know and i felt like you know after i came back from my injuries i just wasn't the same for a same fighter anymore. Were you not the same physically or was it mentally? It was physical, but it also became mental because physically I just didn't feel the same. I didn't feel like I ever regained the power back in my legs. And for the most part, my legs were everything. What were the injuries? I had two ACL surgeries on my right knee. And that completely just changed everything for me

because being a smaller light heavyweight, all of my power was all in my legs. Whatever I couldn't make up for in the size department up top, I was usually able to make up for with the power of my legs. Is that related to the injury that you got when you were at Jackson's and Diego Sanchez crashed into you? No, so that was a different injury. So that was was a mcl but it was on my left knee so the right knee was the one who got that always drove me crazy because i'm like why the fuck is a guy training for a world title fight or in a regular class where everybody knows people collide into people with regular classes all the time with millions of dollars on the line and i know I know. I see that all the time, though, in top gyms.

But see, that's where the training has gone. Before, we would train like maniacs. We would train crazy as hell and put ourselves in some crazy situations. And you try to put yourself in a situation because you're like, you know, I did it before and I've done it so many times and nothing has happened. But when you start to move up and there's more on the line, then you always have to take every single precaution because you can't afford to take a step back. Right. And for me, once I had my knee injuries, though, I just mentally was not the same person. And when I competed, I wasn't the same person. And then it affected me because then I'm like, you know, I'm not the same person.

Did you lose the ability to explode with your knees? Did you have meniscus damage as well? I had meniscus damage. I lost the ability to explode and I lost, it would get tired. My leg would get tired, you know, and it didn't have the same bounce, the same rhythm. And it kind of felt, it kind of felt heavy and I couldn't really feel it in the front. The front part of my knee, I couldn't really feel it. I had a little- Did you have a patella tendon graft? I had a patella tendon graft. So they cut the front open and then they take the piece of the

bone. They take a slice of the patella tendon and a piece of the bone on the bottom and they replace your ACL with that? Correct. Yeah, I did that too. It takes a long time to get that feeling back. It took me more than a year before it felt right. And then even then, if I was on my knees, it would hurt like hell. See, and that's the thing. I still, to this day, I still have dead spots where I can't feel on my knee. Well, it's numb in the front. Yeah, it's numb.

And I think I had to do it a lot because I had two of the knee surgeries back to back. Like when I was only healing up for my first one then it ruptured again so then i had to go back in and get it done you know the first time it was with the cadaver and then the cadaver tissue didn't take but i didn't know that until like almost a year later and then it slipped out just training normally fuck yeah so acls are brutal gosh. It was this. It's the worst, man. It's the worst. And I admire guys who can come back and look phenomenal and do it, you know, still, because when you mess up your knee, you know, for me, it just kind of mentally just it messed me up a bit. Man, I did a lot. I did years worth of it. Just, you know, the first time I didn't do it as well as I could have because I'm like, you know, I bounce back pretty easy. And I did like I felt like I was bouncing back pretty easy. But when it went the second time, then it was harder because not only was I healing from the ACL, but then my knee was healing in general just from, you know, the previous surgery and then plus this surgery. And then I had something different because in the first surgery, it wasn't too invasive because I wasn't using my own tissue.

That cadaver one is nice. It's easy. It's easy if it works, if your body takes it. How long did it take before it blew out again? Man, I was almost a year. I was training for another fight thinking I could get back in shape and fight again. And then when I was training for that fight, it blew out again. Yeah.

I was, I was scheduled to fight Gustafson and then AJ ended up taking that fight instead. But it was, um, it, it was, it was one that,

that just, you know, it was like, uh, first of all, when I was out for two years healing from injury, you know, I got to see what it was like to when,

when all the cameras stopped flashing, when people stopped caring to get your pictures, when, you know, I got to see what it was like to when all the cameras stopped flashing, when people stopped caring to get your pictures, when, you know, that whole feeling, that whole feeling that just, that happens when you hit that transitional point and stop becoming that guy. And it was a difficult transition at first because, you know, even though I always told myself I would never, you know, though i always told myself i would never you know put myself in a mindset of being just that fighter sooner or later you become just that fighter and and that's what happened to me so when i had to uh meaning that you weren't the best well

not not just the best you were an elite right yeah i just wasn't class i wasn't elite world class fighter like i used to be i wasn't on that level anymore. That was something for me that was just like, God damn. Your use of your legs was so pivotal. It was so huge for you. In that Rampage fight, I remember that opening sequence when you just darted after him and blasted him with the right hand. It was so fast. He didn't even know what the fuck was happening. As soon as the bell rang, you were on him, and you cracked him quick.

I was like, that is some serious explosion. And that was even in that fight, I couldn't even wrestle like the last four weeks of that fight because I pulled my hamstring in a fight. So I was just really just drilling up until that fight for the last four weeks. And when I came out like that, I was i was a little insecure and i was like you know what i'm just gonna see what happened if i go and then it worked i was like okay i still got some spring it worked perfect yeah so um yeah so so when i when i was into my career and just kind of getting you know kind of trying to figure out like what what's next for me you know um it was hard you know it was just a

hard place because um you know i didn't really have anybody to talk to i didn't really know what i was going to do next in my life you know and then when i started fighting again i still was in that place where i just wasn't you know totally back to fighting my mentality because fighting is is something mentally that it takes, it takes a certain mentality for, you know, and, and for me,

fighting was something that I did to, uh, exercise some demons a bit, you know, but, but having some time away from the sport, it allowed me to figure out other ways to exercise those demons, demons,

and, you know, figure out some things around them, you know, the things that made me mad, the things that were my fuel before, I kind of made peace with them. And in making peace with a lot of the things that I was using for my fuel, it just changed the way I fought and the way I seen fighting. So coming back to fight, I just wasn't that same fighter anymore. And then when I got to the point where i was like man i can't keep myself like i was like man i'm not fighting the way i want to fight and you know

there's i mean what's the point if i can't go and compete the way i want to i'm only torturing myself so then i decided to retire but then when i retired i still was in a space where i was like man there's still something missing. So then when I did the five MEO DMT, that kind of put things in perspective in a whole different way, you know, and it just, it changed me. It changed me a lot. It changed the way that, you know, like I said, the way I think, the way I eat, everything about it, you know. So it was so cathartic in so many senses of the word, you know. Do you think that something like that would be really beneficial for fighters that are in the twilight of their career? I think it could be.

I think every fighter gets to a point where you fight enough, then fighting, you kind of get in a weird space about it. And, you know, I've seen fighters go through that period where they just kind of like figuring out that why why am i still doing this you know they've had great moments inside the cage but then they have those down moments and those down moments are the moments where it's harder to come back from and i think those are the times where you you know a psychedelic or something like that could put things in perspective and allow the fighter to see the why behind the reason they're doing it and maybe create a new why. Yeah. You're so different. It's funny.

You know, I've noticed that about you over the last few years of just I don't get to see you that often. And when I get to see you over the last few years, I'm like, wow, something has changed in Rashad. Like you're more, I mean, I hate to use the word spiritual, but you seem like a more spiritual, more peaceful guy. I had noticed that. So that's why I was really interested to have this conversation and see what your journey was. Yeah, it's been one hell of a journey, man. You know, I just teamed up with some people in Denver. One of my good friends, Dalelly out in denver you know uh he's the one who told me about the medicine about the

medicine the toad medicine and um after that we just kind of continue to always link up and we do you know a bunch of ceremonies together we do ayahuasca and just um just make sure we always have that connection. But it was through working with him, I became part of this group, Unlimited Sciences. want to make psilocybin usage because del jolly was one of the guys who who uh got who's on the committee who got it approved for denver uh decriminalizing he was one of the guys who who made that possible do you know how it works so are you allowed to possess a certain amount of psilocybin in denver is that how it works um i'm not really too sure exactly how it all works uh with that but i think that they're still working out the details of about how it's going to be which you can possess on on the uh on the legal side but um with unlimited sciences you know we've uh you know we we've been able to um take that we want

to take the psilocybin experience where it's one that people can go through for healing and help and get consistent uh consistent information consistent data on you know the full spectrum on how you can use it in the ways it's used so we've uh teamed up and this has never been done before we teamed up with john hopkins university and we're going to be part of their study and we're going to do like the first real world world study where we go out and and uh you know take information from people you know people from 18 and up who can speak english can sign up for our um our study and you know what you do is you go and you fill out the questionnaire and everything is is um hip protected so no one has to worry about you know getting in trouble for trouble for their usage of psilocybin.

But, you know, John Hobson has taken all this information, and we're collecting it for him. And, you know, what we want to do is we want to be able to give this back to them so that they can see on which way they want to direct their clinical research, you know. And what that can do is you know with with the unlimited sciences it's it comes from this group called realm of caring and realm of caring is out in Denver and Roma caring was for medical refugees during the whole when there there was medical refugees for cannabis who couldn't use it in their state, came to Denver where they were able to use it. But when they first came there, there wasn't any information on how much to use because Heather Jackson and this other girl who started it, her name was Paige, they started the Realm of Caring and it was just them.

They were treating their child and their children had seizures and epilepsy and stuff like that so they wanted they tried everything in a medical field to help them but they couldn't could not help them with that so then he went to cannabis and there was only two of them doing it so they didn't really have much information to go back from so then they would share information amongst each other and then they would ask other people. And then through networking, they create this huge community of people with data. And then they started to come with more and more data. And then they started working with John Hopkins University and made a protocol and everything else. Now the realm of caring helped thousands of families all over the world just with the information and data that they've been able to

collect. That's awesome. John Hopkins has been involved in psilocybin research for a while, right? They had some thing that they did on near-death patients, people that are close to death and alleviating the fear of passing. Yeah. And that's one thing that they're very interested in diving into the mind aspect and everything. And I think that the real-world study would be good because what it does is it allows them to put their money and their resources into where people are actually using it and the things that are interesting to the people. So, I mean, it's one thing to have it in a clinical setting, but it's another thing to do it on your own and be able to get the results from it. So hopefully this study with John Hopkins University, it definitely changes games and puts things on a level where people can get the healing they need from the mushrooms.

Have you read any McKenna stuff? A little bit. I follow McKenna a bit. You know, I listen to him quite a bit yeah fascinating guy listening to him weird voice right

weird voice but hypnotic almost yeah you can't I mean I listen to hours of McKinnon just his understanding and breakdown of

of Mushroom this is crazy I'm friends with his brother and his brother is another genius really fascinating character who's also at Alts Book

and psychedelic proponent. And he lives up in British Columbia now. And he's a big proponent of one of – Terrence had a theory that Dennis subscribes to called the stoned ape theory. Do you know this theory? Yeah. Yeah, and this is a really controversial theory, but fascinating that they believe that at least Terrence had this idea that one of the catalysts for human evolution that changed us from lower primates to human beings cow patties and experiment by eating grubs and bugs and things they'd find there. And they would also eat the mushrooms that would grow on the cow patties. And the doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million years is this gigantic mystery. Like they have no idea what happened.

I mean, apparently, according to biologists biologists is the biggest mystery in the fossil record that the human brain doubled and not just that any organ would double in size over a period of two million years but that the organ responsible for the theory of evolution in the first place doubled over two million years is really interesting but it coincides with climate change and coincides with these rain for and this is all terence's work i'm repeating it coincides with climate change and coincides with these rainforests. And this is all Terrence's work. I'm repeating. It coincides with these rainforests receding into grasslands.

And then these undulates, these cow-like animals that would live on these grasslands and eat the cow and take shits. And then the manure would grow or the psilocybin, rather, would grow in the manure. And they would follow these cows around and then eat their mushrooms that would grow in their manure. And it also coincides with the earliest civilizations would all worship cattle, like Chaktal Hiuk, which is one of the earliest known civilizations. They had these, it was a real cattle worshiping sort of, I don't want to say a cult, but the way their culture would operate. They worshiped cattle. And some would say, well, that's because they ate them and they used their milk.

I'm sure, I'm sure that had something to do with it. But like the Hindus don't even eat them. They just worship them. Imagine that. You got a billion people living in a place, Everyone's starving and they're not eating the cows. They're not eating the most delicious animal on the planet. Well, it's because they grew mushrooms. And the ancient Hindu scripts like Soma is one of the main sacraments that they would talk about.

No one really understood. To this day, they're not exactly sure what Soma is. But it's some sort of a psychedelic sacrament and it probably was a combination of many things but a big one was most likely psilocybin was a part of that and that sort of corresponded with their relationship with cows that they had this this worship of cattle when they wouldn't eat them and the reason is because God came out of their butt. In their eyes, you know, they would make the manure. The mushrooms would grow in the manure. And, I mean, there's all sorts of mushroom iconography in all of their ancient religious artwork.

I mean, I think mushrooms, I know mushrooms have played a big part in our society. Yeah. I mean, in our civilization, in our ancient civilization. For sure. And I don't think it's been, you's been properly covered the way that it could be. Right. It's amazing because the minute you eat a mushroom at the right dosage, you feel it.

You feel the fact that it's like, oh, this is something ancient because there's something that happens when you go to that place where you lose the self. When you lose the self, then there's something that happens that's just magical. There really is no way to explain it or dress it up with words. It's just something magical that happens once you reach that level. Yeah, whenever I have these conversations with people, there's two types of people.

There's people like you that have had the experiences that go, and then there's people that have no experience at all that look, you're like, yeah, it's mushrooms. But I feel bad for those people because I know how I used to think. And I would have dismissed it the same way. I would have said, this is the foolish notions of frivolous spiritual people that are just being ridiculous.

And they think, oh, it's all about the mushrooms, man. But it is. If you do it, you'll realize. Like, oh, well, if you do any real potent breakthrough psychedelic, any real breakthrough psychedelic experience is going to make you humble. It's going to make you realize like, oh, there's more to this than everyday consciousness. There's more to this experience, this existence. There's something way bigger. And you only can tap into it through a variety of different methods, whether it's name your psychedelic or name your trance-like state that people can go into.

There's a lot of different ways to tap into it. But once you do, you realize, like, this is not this little thin thing that we're touching right now. This is not everything. Right. And that's the thing about it. It really just cuts through the whole materialism of everything. Yeah. And it really shows that materialism is just a product of consciousness, you know.

And sometimes we tend to think that, you know, our conscience is a product of the materialism. But, you know, at the end of the day, conscience is everything. And when I did my toad experience, I almost felt as if like I'm not really here and I'm really somewhere else just projecting my consciousness to here. my consciousness to here and it seemed as if like when i smoked the toad the venom severed that connection and the connection wasn't able to come here on earth and i was just really where i really am that's what it felt like and then when i came back to my body i remember feeling like like i didn't want to come back and And actually, it was saying, like, please don't go, please don't go when I came back. Wow. I felt like I was, I dissolved and I became a part of everything.

I felt like, like, I always tend to think of life as, like, my own view of experience. It's right here, right? My life is right here. Now, right now, it's in this room. Later on, it'll be at the comedy store. There's places I go. My life is right here now right now it's in this room later on it'll be at the comedy store there's places i go my life is where those places are but when i had my first maod m5 maod mt experience it felt like no no it's all together you're in the middle of this infinite soup of life and there's no one spot right that spot is your imagination it's like

your own the limitations of your biology that we have kept from the time that we were small little mammals to the time that we were lower primates to the time that we're human beings the limit the biological instincts to survive and to preserve our dna and to carry that dna on dna on all of those instincts are the reason why we're here but also so limiting because they they keep your consciousness bottled up in the location that you're at it keeps your your feeling of life contained to wherever you're at at that moment and staying safe and then keeping people paying attention to you and making sure you got the coolest shit and all the things that seem so silly when you trip yeah absolutely absolutely when um when i fall away and the feeling of

falling away and not being who i who i think i am is almost the most freeing feeling but at the same time it's one of the scariest yeah it's one of, but at the same time, it's one of the scariest. Yeah. It's one of the scariest at the same time, but it's necessary and it's necessary in order to reach a certain point of understanding. When you reach a certain point of understanding of going inside, then you don't need a guru. You don't need anyone to to to drop insight or knowledge because all the knowledge and insight it's there if you go deep enough and

you know how to go deep enough you know and you understand the fact that you know um there's this there's there's just this knowingness and it's hard to explain like it sounds crazy to say but there's just this knowingness out there and you can tap into it yeah there's something out there for sure what's interesting to me is some people have a way better grasp of the english language and they're way better at describing things the way they're way better at sort of um putting trips into perspective because everyone sucks at it even the best people suck at it. I'm terrible at it.

I've described it the same way you described it. There's not really words for it. You do your best, but it's so poor. Like you're just the ability that words have to convey the experience. There's no words that are correct. They don't even get in the neighborhood. They wrap around it. They try.

And even in a state, I remember being in a state where I was on one of my deepest trips, and I'm in the trip, and my friend looks over at me, and then I rave him over because I want to tell him the secret that I found about consciousness and about existence. I want to tell him the secret that I found about consciousness and about existence. But I couldn't tell him because the knowingness was telling me if I tell him, then I'm not going to be able to come back and live. I had to go. I had to leave this earth. That's what it was telling me.

So I remember just sitting there just like, man, I want to be able to tell him and be able to convey to him in words what I'm feeling. The only thing that came out of my mouth was, just go sit over there. It'll come to you. Because that's what happened to me. I was in his yard and I just went and walked. And as I was walking, this knowingness told me, I was walking barefoot in this grass and I kept getting my feet poked. And the knowingness told me, it I was walking barefoot in this grass and I kept getting my feet poked. And the knowingness told me, it was like, you know, it told me the path to walk.

And it said the reason why I'm stepping on these, getting pricked is because I'm stepping on live grass, stepping on dead spots where there's no. And it just came to me just that clear. And I just started doing it and I wasn't getting pricked by any grass no more. Then it told me to sit down and then I sat down and then i just had like the most profound just realizations just hit me like it was like it was like it was coming out of the sun it sounds crazy to say i was outside and i went and i was looking at the sun and it was like the sun transitioned to something else it was just became very deep and it had layers of it was it was very, very trippy. But during that experience, I remember looking around and seeing everyone that I was with and laughing to myself, saying like they would not believe this, but I'm actually every single one of them.

actually every single one of them and that that was like a thought that i remember thinking and feeling like it like i'm feeling myself right now and it bugged me out it i know it's deep it's so deep do you still train all the time yeah i train all the time you train all the time yeah do you what do you feel different like even when you're hitting things yeah i've but not but not in a way like i feel like oh man i feel bad i don't feel like that i just feel like um i may ever since i was able to to kind of come back after i this whole transition happened i feel like i have a better idea on competing now, like as far as like my mindset for competing is better than it was before, just because I don't. My ego is not so attached to it as it was, you know, and I'm able to go out and just give my best in whatever it is. It is and completely just like, oh, you know, it's whatever.

And it's easy to say now that i'm not competing where it counts for anything but for me before even in practice it felt like something if i lost in practice then it would stick with me for a couple days you know i'll be upset about that but now i can just go in and just train and you know and it doesn't it doesn't stay with me like i would before. Do you feel like, though, that to be an elite fighter, maybe you need that burning desire to the point where mistakes burn and they hurt? I know as a comedian, there's a parallel there. If I'm really working hard or really concentrating hard,

if I'm really working hard really concentrating hard anything I say that is stupid or comes off wrong or I try something that doesn't work

it will fuck with me for days just all day long even in conversation I'm having fun with some friends and I say something stupid like that

it'll sit in my head for a day I'll wake up in the middle of the night to piss going why the fuck did you say that? It's the worst. No, you do need that as an athlete, but at the same time. Particularly as a fighter, right?

Yeah. Because you have to. I mean, it's so, the difference between a champion, you know more than anybody, between a champion and a good fighter is so close. It's such a- It's so close. It's so close. It's so close. It is.

And sometimes it's that fucking fire, that anger, that fear, that drive inside of you to be elite, to be the best. And sometimes that comes with every practice you have to win, everything you have to do, every fucking training session. You have to burn it out. If you don't, you feel to burn it out if you don't you feel like you're less than you could be yeah i i agree with that but there's also the other side of that too where there's that that that blissful ignorance and that blissful ignorance

is where you just go out and do something and you do it a hundred percent great all the time just because you enjoy it and there's not the pressure of, oh, I have to do it a certain kind of way. Like, for instance, when John Jones was first competing, John Jones, he competed so freely because it was just in his nature. He was just so creative and he fought different because of you know he fought from that place of just creativity that ignorance that that that ignorant bliss you know he couldn't be beat he didn't believe he can be beat and you know he would fight that way and he would do some genius stuff in there just because of that you know but then when you have those experiences

where you you know you've been caught in a fight or you've made some mistakes in there, then you do know better. But then those thoughts, it actually slows you down a bit too because you're not fully reacting. You're thinking a hair where before it was just kind of like a reaction. Yeah, I talk about his opening fight, the opening sequence of his fight with Shogun. I mean, he's 23 years old he's fighting for the world title and he opens up with a flying knee right who the fuck does that that's that that was that that was that that was that dumb and young yeah that's the best way to say it but at the same time that that blissful ignorance that's what made that was his blueprint

for so long you know and he's turned it into a whole fighting style just that you know letting it off hang out letting it fly and that's what worried me um that's why i thought in this fight with dominic reyes it was going to be a closer fight because of the fact that dominic reyes now had that what john used to have being that blissful ignorance he didn't really know how much you know how better John was or didn't even care. He was just kind of like, Oh, I can win.

You know what I'm saying? He was so confident himself almost in a, in an ignorant, blissful way, but it worked out for him, you know? Well, what's interesting about that fight is first of all, it's a great argument for five round championship fights because for the first three rounds,

Dominic Reyes was winning. Yeah. The question is whether he won the third round. That's the one I believe that's up for grabs. Most people that I've talked to think John won the last two clearly. Most people. Most people that I've talked to that are experts, most people, few disagree, believe that Dominic Reyes won the first three.

And the third round is the one that seems to be you go well dominic scored more but it was close enough where you could see someone giving it to john particularly since john was pressing the action john was pushing forward maybe you give it to john but they thought dominic won it but they said if there's a disputable round it is that third round yeah i agree one fucking judge gave john four rounds to one that's insane this is the same judge that when i believe luke thomas is talking about this i'm sorry if i'm wrong so i'm not saying the judge's name because i'm not sure if i'm correct but i believe it's the same judge that um trevin giles who fought uh james kraus um giles and kraus was an amazing fight giles

won wound up winning the decision but the first round kraus had his back for four minutes and the referee the judge gave that round to giles which is insane i mean for four minutes kraus had his back was the guy was fighting off chokes kraus was real close to submitting him couple times during those four minutes and the judge the same judge who gave four rounds to john jones gave that first round to giles where there was a dude on his back for four fucking minutes most of the round and maybe even a fucking more egregious fight was um uh andre yule versus uh jonathan martinez that fight was fucking crazy that fight was crazy that was the most crazy one martinez won that fight martinez won that. Yule broke his arm, I think.

I'm not sure if it's a broken arm, but he had a significant injury to his right hand early in the fight. Somewhere in between either the first or the second round, not sure, but he really couldn't throw a right hand, and it was kind of hanging. You could kind of see it was hanging. And Martinez put in work. It was an amazing performance by him, and he got fucked over, man, real bad. It was bad decision-making.

There was a bunch of bad fights. There was a bunch of bad fights there was a bunch of bad decisions it wasn't just one there was like four or five on a card of what 12 fights 11 12 fights i forget how many was from the opening prelims there was bad decisions just almost like people who don't know what they're seeing yeah and and that's crazy too especially when we reach the point that we have in mixed martial arts. I think that we've turned a corner in that, meaning the fact that there's so much out there, so much knowledge out there in the sport and everything else like that. If you're going to be judging it, you've got to at least know when somebody is winning a round. I mean, there's aspects of John's game that was, you know, a score, some points.

You know, he was always moving forward with the action. But, you know, even when he was moving forward with the action, he wasn't terribly too offensive. He would come with his legs, but, you know, a lot of times he would allow Dominic to kind of be the first one initiated and then moving off, and sometimes it seemed like he was just kind of chasing him. But, you know, I think that it was that third round. That third round was that hard round to score. But, you know, I think that Dom had the edge. But if you're going to be the champ, then you got to beat the champ.

And I don't think he did that. Jon Jones oppressed me so much with the shots that he was able to take, but more or less the mindset that Jon had. That mindset that Jon had in those championship rounds, to me, that showed that this guy is, you know, he is a total package. that this guy is you know he is a total package and when it comes to fighting just mentally speaking you know he's he's somebody who i fought thought that was frustrated and working through his own frustrating in the fight for his frustration in the fight is is difficult and he didn't succumb to his own frustration and and he just kept that pressure going and took some big shots from a heavy hitter but uh dominic reyes is a problem for anybody. He's a problem. He's a real problem, especially now that he's got that rub He touched touched greatness. Yeah with john. Who's the greatest ever?

I feel like those last two rounds should count more. This is my personal opinion But uh, john cavanaugh said something on his twitter page I believe it was john cavanaugh and it reflects exactly how I feel. That if this fight was going to go on another five rounds, it's pretty fucking clear to me who's going to win. If this is to the death, John Jones is going to win that fight. If it's to the death, there's no doubt about it in my mind that John Jones is eventually going to get him. Those last two rounds, Dominic Reyes was hurting. You could see him looking and taking big, deep breaths and trying to move, and his arms

were labored, and John just kept pressing, kept pressing, kept kicking him, kept punching him, kept trying for the takedown. And that should mean more. It should mean more towards the end of the fight. At the end of the fight, if you win a decision, but you just got your ass kicked for the last four minutes, that seems crazy to me that you won the fight. Because, I mean, I know this is a dumb way to think about it, but if we were in a schoolyard, kick for the last four minutes that seems crazy to me that you won the fight yeah because i mean i know this is a dumb way to think about it but if we were in a schoolyard right we were in high

school and some dude and another dude fought the dude who's getting the shit beat out of them at the end of the fight is the guy who lost right right when the teachers come and they pull you off that guy that's who won that's who won and i know that you can't score a professional sport the way you look but it is the rarest of rare professional sports because it's a the sport of fighting right and in fighting when you're getting your ass kicked you were you know you're supposed to you're supposed to lose if you're getting your ass kicked you lost yeah and if you're kicking the guy's ass you win sounds crazy but at the end of that fight john jones was kicking dominic raise his ass he was he was chasing him down dominic was taking a big deep breath he was firing back when he fired

back very well in the fourth round but john absorbed john has a fucking hell of a chin too oh my hell of a chin oh my god a hell of a chin i mean you my gosh. A hell of a chin. I mean, you can't. He's something special because of everything. He's something special because of his physical attributes. He's very tall and long. He's very strong. It's not just his skill. He's got great wrestling. He's got great striking.

It is his mind, too. Yes. It's all those things. It's his ability to press forward. It's ability to break people its ability to stay on top of you have that champion's mindset and to know that he's fought the majority of his career as a world champion which is fucking crazy i mean almost a decade as the greatest in the world chasing everybody that he's fought every single fighter that he's fought you look at them they're

all guys like you guys like machida world champions rampage world champions over and over and over again you go through the list of them just all these killers there's this killer after killer gustafson you know i mean you just keep going through his entire career dc twice stopped him in the second fight he's a fucking assassin and and the most impressive thing about it for me is the fact that you know on a physical scale he's phenomenal but just mentally speaking to be able to go through everything that he's gone through you know the ups and downs yeah what that what that does to your mind yes you know what that does to your mind and and just being able to put that to a side or be able to use it in order to go out and still perform as if like he hasn't missed a beat yeah that is hard because it gets to the point um you know you you get you get with anything in life you

get tired of the monotony of it you get you get jaded by it and he hasn't been jaded by it and he still goes out there and performs like that that's impressive i think he needed someone like dominic to get that fear going too i think he knew dominic reyes physically is a talented guy he's a great athlete he has tremendous footwork his ability to change angles and then fire back is insane It's so good You saw it in the OSP fight Where he knocked him out with like a couple seconds to go

You see it in a lot of his Jared Cannon ear fight He could step back and fire Fire uppercut Step back and fire that straight left His ability to change direction is amazing And I think a lot of that could be attributed to his football Basketball I mean baseball, footwork, movement, his ability to explode. All that stuff that he did in other sports, I think, directly translates to his ability to move really well inside the octagon.

And then on top of it, he's gigantic. He's the same size as John, which is very unusual for John to face someone that's his height. And he's really fucking strong, too. Now, that was the intangible that I think that John didn't expect. He didn't expect for him to be as strong as he was. When he's able to get back up every time. Yeah, when he'd get up like he wasn't even on him. Like, dang.

His legs are fucking huge. You look at Reyes' legs. Oh, huge. Yeah, I mean, he's got tremendous power. I mean, both with his punches, but also with his ability to move, man. He was throwing great kicks. He was chopping at John's legs. I mean, out of any fight in John's future, I want to see a rematch.

I really want to see what Dominic Reyes looks like now with this rub, understanding how close he was, and then the amount of conditioning that he's going to have to put himself through to be able to do that again in five rounds. And it's not like either guy got fucked up in that fight where they're going to be severely damaged. It's not like one of those crazy wars where, like, Adesanya, Kelvin Gastelum. At the end of that fight, I was like, oh, my God.

You know, I hope Kelvin takes some time off after that one. That was chaos, just wildnessness it wasn't like that it was a grueling difficult hard fight but it wasn't a fight where there was so much damage that both john and and dominic needed to take a long time off i feel like you could make that fight in eight months absolutely and that would be the fight to make that's that is a that's a crazy rematch. And the thing about it was, surprisingly to see, like their faces weren't beat up at all. And I'm like, these dudes were landing some shots on each other. And their faces not even. Yes.

Like I thought for sure John's lip would be all swollen like it was when he fought Augustus. Yeah. He took those shots well, man. It's amazing. It's amazing. But I think that this is exactly what John needed in that light heavyweight weight class because it was getting kind of stagnant. And I think it needed some time to mature. But I think Dominic Ray has just said, you better stay here for a little bit.

And here's another guy, Corey Anderson. Oh, yes. Corey Anderson is somebody. Listen. That's the dark horse I've been telling everybody. Listen, that's the dark horse. The been telling everybody Listen that's the dark horse The way he knocked out Johnny Walker

And he's angry He's angry He's angry And that's something You've never seen Corey Yes You've never seen that before After that fight

He was like Letting everybody know You fuckers Been slipping You've been sleeping on me You guys have been Pretending that I don't exist I'm out here

Beating the best in the world If he fights Jon Jones I think that's when Jon better be like He better be so ready He doesn't have a chip He's got logs on his shoulder He's angry

After that Johnny Walker fight He was so out of character He was screaming and yelling He was angry after he won He knocked him out in the first round And then he's bad The years of disrespect though and that's and that's how he trained though he always trained with that

that mindset like oh they don't respect me you know that's why he worked so hard yes his endurance is insane his pace is insane yeah training alongside those guys in um in jersey was probably one of the best experience of my career training with mark henry was was mind-blowing you were telling me about this you and i had this long conversation about that tell me what it's like to work with that guy mark henry is is a genius you know what he does is he breaks down the game like no one ever ever trained with before um so for every combination that we throw every punch is all accounted for with a code. And that code is, uh, specific to, to you and, and to what's in important in your life and the way you value.

So he sits and he talks, talks to you about, you know, your family, whatnot. And then, you know, he'll make these codes up and these codes would just be like for a combination of be, I say, a jab cross hook, you know, then he'll, he, then he'll say that's Nia, that's my daughter's name. And then he'll make a whole system of codes with just names. And then when you're sparring, he'll call out the name and you just got to know what that technique goes to. Wow. There's a bunch of different techniques for different colors,

for different movement. And, you know, he can have have he just says it and it's like he's like when i watch him go with frankie because frankie has a system down to best for it's like he's controlling frankie like a like a like a like a game and he's just saying yeah he's just saying these commands and frankie hears him and then he goes off and you know sometimes like if if i'm going and i don't see it he'll off and you know sometimes like if I'm going and I don't see it he'll say something I don't see it I'll like nod it off and then he'll say another one but if he says it then most of the time I just do it because he sees it and right

you know that's crazy to have that kind of confidence in another person it's it well that's well that's that's the part of the training that that you learn and then you know have that kind of confidence in another person. Well, that's the part of the training that you learn. And then, you know, you kind of – the good side to that is that it makes it easier for when you're just out there fighting. Sometimes it can be difficult if you are too dependent on it and you just kind of lose the ability to create yourself, you know. on it and you just kind of lose the ability to create yourself you know but for the most part um he does such a good job of breaking it down that uh it's it's pretty easy but it is it is a a very technical system to learn and anybody who gets a chance to work with mark henry i suggest you do it because and here's another thing mark henry is one of those guys like i stayed at his house when i first uh went went to stay with him.

And he doesn't sleep. Like he'll stay up to like 2, 3 o'clock in the morning watching film. And then he'll go to sleep for a couple hours and he'll wake up at like 7, 7 in the morning to go do his first pizza shop because he owns a pizza shop. And he has this crazy work schedule, but he loves fighting. It's so weird that a guy runs a successful pizza business and he's also one of the best trainers in the world. Yes. It's so strange. And he makes a killing dirt with his pizza shop.

He kills it. I heard his basement gym is amazing. Oh, it is amazing. His basement gym is where all the magic happens, man. He has all the codes written out. And he'll torture you in that basement. He'll torture you. He'll get your mindset sharp as hell, but he he tortured you in that basement he'll torture you he'll get your

mindset like sharp as hell but he'll torture you in that basement you know well it's so such a diverse group of fighters right as a beat comes down there marlon morais he had so many uh interesting guys edson barboza so many interesting guys had gone through that gym it's it's so crazy like when i first um like i'll stand there i got to train with the beat a little bit i got to live with the beat and in the russian the dagestan fighters so it's pretty pretty cool experience because you know you kind of get to know their culture and just kind of just uh just get a different respect for it you know and those guys are just hard work of those dagestani guys they're so hard they they they work hard they pray hard they they just are very very focused individuals and you watch them you're like okay you know even i'm like you know what maybe i need to get a little bit more serious about my thing you know but that's

where the the success comes from that's that's it think about how many great fighters come out of that region i mean it's really it's extraordinary yeah and these guys are phenomenal like i watch them after training and these guys do um this this uh like it's like a randori type of sparring afterwards and they just do like jumping off the walls all these kind of like these acrobatic crazy moves that you don't think ever work and you see them like oh my god where do you get that from they practice it all the time and they just they just they just do all these kind of crazy moves at the end of training and at the end of training at the end of training like so like they're done with all the real work let's just fuck around and see if we get creative yeah they get creative and they just start just doing all kinds of stuff and they you know throw

real moves in there but they just they drill everything and the beat that dude is the beat is probably like one of the best guys i've ever seen in training just like like martial arts wise this guy he jumps off the cage and do all kinds of acrobats and come down doing all kinds of ground acrobats and he just he just makes it look so effortless and easy it's crazy he is really good he's he's really good with his mixture of traditional martial arts techniques you know because he has that kung fu background so he throws a lot of like round kicks and spinning kicks and all that kind of crazy shit but then he'll hit you with like some judo shit a lot of tosses and trips yeah and he's got great submissions too i mean he's got great wrestling he's got great boxing i mean he's a weird combination of a bunch of different styles

and he's tall too that tall that the tall length is is really um it's something that helps him out too because frankie agger whenever he goes on he's like man i feel like i can get him down but then i look down and then his feet are still touching the ground. I swear I have them up. And his feet are still touching. He's so tall for 145. I'll tell you what, though. He had a hard time in his last fight with Calvin Cater. That dude is fucking dangerous. Cater's a dog, though.

He's a dog. He's a dog. He's the dark horse at 45, in my opinion, because he was beating Zabit in that last round. And it was rough. Zabit was trying to just get the fuck away from him. And he just stays on him. And I think he has the best boxing in that last round. And it was rough. Like, Zabit was trying to just get the fuck away from him, and he just stays on him. And I think he has the best boxing in that division.

And he's also huge for 45. Yes, he is. You stand next to him, you're like, how the fuck are you weighing 145? Yeah. He looks like he's a 160. Yeah. He doesn't look anything like 145. I know.

It seemed like in that fight, Kader kind of realized towards the end, like, wait a minute, I can beat this dude, you know? Yeah. And that happens sometimes. When you go against a guy who end, like, wait a minute, I can beat this dude, you know? And that happens sometimes. When you go against a guy who has a bunch of different tricks, you find yourself putting yourself in his trick bag just by being aware of all the things that he can do. You find yourself

like, oh, he's going to set that up. Oh, he's going to set that up. And by you being too watchful of what he's doing, you're shutting your own game down. And it seemed like Kader just threw caution to the wind that third round. He was like, you know what? I'm going to just go out and just make it happen. And then when he did that, you're shutting your own game down. And it seemed like Cater just threw caution to the wind that third round. He was like, you know what? I'm going to just go out and just make it happen. And then when he did that, he found his opportunities.

I think also the first two rounds were really fast-paced, and I think in the third round, Cater was the one who was in better condition. He was the one who was pressing the pace in the third round. And he was also landing body shots, like some nasty body shots that were adding up. He's a fascinating guy, Calvin Cater. I'm really interested to see him. He's fighting Jeremy Stevens next, which should be fucking chaos. Because Jeremy Stevens is another savage.

Oh, man, he's a savage. I love watching him fight. He only fights one way, and that's kill or be killed. See, I feel like guys like that don't even need to win. They just need to go out there and just fight. Because his fighting is so good. You just want to need to go out there and just fight because like like his fighting is so good you just want to see him go out there just fight man yeah well he's had so many oh shit moments in his career like dennis bermudez he hit some of that flying knee up against the cage you know he josh emmett that the ko josh emmett he fucks people up man

and he's got ridiculous power too and with calvin's boxing and Jeremy's savagery, the two of them together. And Jeremy has ridiculous power. The two of them together, that's going to be amazing. And then they have Zabit. Zabit is now going to fight Ortega. Brian Ortega's comeback fight is going to be Zabit. And that's a tough fight to come back to. Ortega's been out, injured a bunch, hasn't fought since he lost to Max.

He's had a bunch of real problematic injuries that he can't get over. And then finally he's healthy now. He's going through training. And tall order, though, to jump right back in the deep end of the pool where the guy likes a beat. But you know what, though? Sometimes it is a tall order, but sometimes when you just came from a big fight, that's the kind of fight it's easier to get up for like if

he like he just came from titling uh challenging for the title right it'd be hard for him to to take a too far of a step down in competition because then it's right then it's gonna be hard to get himself up for it but if he's taking a step kind of like in in in a you know in an upward motion then it's like okay i can get up for this right and then he can train for it you know yeah because the beat is i don't know what the official ranking is in my book he's two or three right he's right there he's right at the top of the heap in my book i mean there's volkanovsky he's the champ there's max holloway they have to fight again they have to they're gonna fight again and then after that it's basically the beat and cater that's that's how

i look at it and then a bunch of other guys now that aldo's down for 235 which is real interesting because aldo is going to fight triple c he's going to fight sahudo that's interesting yes that is for the title that is interesting very interesting i thought aldo looked the best that he's looked in a long time at 135 yeah he looked amazing he looked like a bit like the all although minus the kicks he didn't minus the kicks i wonder why he doesn't throw so many kicks anymore i don't know he has injuries or something he might have an injury i think he don't want to take a chance of of his knees yeah hurting something and then having to fight through it you know fighting compromise but it's crazy

because his kicks were just such a devastating weapon i mean he'll only need like two or three of them and just change the whole complexion of the fight. One. Back. When he fought Uriah. Yeah. But imagine, now imagine that power of leg kick to the lower calf.

Like how they, oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, maybe it's a knee thing. Maybe he can't throw those kicks because his knees are fucked up. I don't know. I'd like to know because that was one of his primary weapons.

But still, even without that, I felt like he beat Mirai's. to know because that was one of his primary weapons but still even without that i felt like he beat mirage i felt like that was a bad decision but he's you know he's fighting mirage who's easily one of the best 35ers on earth mirage is so good man that left high switch kick that he has is a thing of beauty yeah the way he whips it it's like a whip it's crazy like it's effortless it just goes to your head. Yeah, Marlon is pretty sick, man. He's beautiful. Is Aldo throwing some kicks?

Oh, okay. Four days ago. Oh. Oh, okay. It's practice, but. Hmm. Looks normal. Looks normal.

It looks normal. I don't see any problems. Except the sound's all fucked up. See, it's different, though. It's different when you got to crack somebody's leg, you know. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I think that, I think honestly when it comes to, you know, the state of mixed martial arts, I think that, you know, once a lot of these fighters start to, because we were speaking about it earlier like we were in a dark ages when it came

to training and that transition of how to become more professional with your training you know i think nowadays fighters are starting to understand that more you know with the you know the performance institute is helping to educate these fighters a lot more on what proper training should be yeah and what it truly could encompass, you know, and now there's more professionalism added to martial arts, but there's still an aspect that needs to be covering, and that's on the equipment side, you know. Like the equipment, the company that I work with, Onyx, have you heard of Onyx before? Yes, yeah, I have a pair of the gloves.

Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Very, very good. you heard honest yes yeah i have a pair of the gloves okay excellent excellent very very good so we have a whole line and this the line that we have with onyx it's it's really the first mma branded like a mma company that's made for all the the way we move in mma you know everything that happens mma because now the equipment that we use now, we borrow it from kickboxing or boxing. And there's that gap of just efficiency when it comes to manufacturing for a mixed martial art because kickboxing, they don't have to worry about all the things that we have to worry about

when it comes to mixed martial arts. So the equipment that Trevor has made is all with that in mind. You know, the gloves that we make made you try the x factor gloves yeah trevor whitman sent them to me yeah so is it he designed them yeah he so trevor trevor's a genius he's another genius oh my gosh an absolute genius so he started so what happened is when we were trained if anything happened to our equipment we'll just give it to trevor and trevor will go and he'll tweak it and he'll make some adjustments so then Trevor's like man you know he's like man the more he started to do that the more he started to realize there's a huge

gap like the equipment that we're we're using is not efficient you know some gloves that should be you know 16 ounces are actually 11 ounces you know and every there's no integrity when it comes to uh equipment so Trevor did a lot of research and he was like, man, it really hasn't been any improving on equipment since the thumb was put on the boxing glove, you know, and that's that's pretty much it. So Trevor went and he learned how to sew. He learned how to do everything. And he was in his basement just making this equipment. You know, he's he's made uh the x-factor glove you have look at him there you go and he's good at like at first i didn't i didn't

realize how in-depth it was until i went to his basement and seen the little shop that he had but it's pretty high tech so we have the the the glove the x-factor glove but we have um a knee brace and we have a um a headgear to knee brace um they're not knee brace it's the uh knee sleeve it's like it's like a nice it's a it's a shin guard but it slides into a knee brace you can slide you can slide it's like a knee brace at the same time as well as an ankle brace. It secures a whole leg pretty much. And it feels like you have nothing on. And you can kick with, like, anything. And it doesn't feel like – it feels amazing.

And he has a really, really thin headgear. And I want to show you these gloves. I brought some gloves to show you. And I want to show you these gloves. I brought some gloves to show you. So these gloves right here are what we're going to be doing for the competition gloves, the competition and the training gloves, the 7-ounce training gloves. So pretty much what these are. So this one is the – let's see here. so has he developed a different glove for mma for

competition as well yeah so this is the ufc seeing these because they need to make some adjustments yeah we're talking with the ufc but these are yeah so these are the curved i like how it's curved so it sets up that you're in a curved position already on because when you you know, when you get the gloves now, they're like a cardboard. They want to open your hand almost. Yeah, they always want to open your hands. But this allows your hands to stay in a natural fist-locked position, and you don't got to worry about that. You see how I'm getting it on?

Yeah, big hands. Oh, yeah. Okay, so it's curved right away. Yeah, curved right away. And then when you... That's way better. Yeah, like the old pride gloves. Yeah.

Yeah. Good padding, too. So it's... I like them. A lot. These are definitely better than the ones UFC's using right now. Yeah. Take a look at now. Yeah. I'll tell you that.

Yeah. So, you know, if you see the X-wrapping system in there, that also goes in there. So then that way it makes it so that your hand, you don't get the boxing break on your hand. It keeps everything, all the muscles, all the ligaments and bones in place. So then that way when you're punching everything is is in form so this is it says grappling glove fight yes grappling glove and fight glove so these ones were the ones at the factory and i had to hurry up and get these out just so i can i wanted to show you these so this one is is um this one is is going to be like the training

the training one but we're going to put like the training one, but we're going to put a different head on the front of it. What's going to be different about it? It's going to be just the top is going to be different, a little bit more so you can punch with, like you can. Oh, hit it with the side? Hit it with the side. It'll be a little bit like.

This has got some side padding. Yeah, but it. Definitely better than nothing. It'll be a side padding like this a little bit here, you know bit you know so it's going to be a bit bigger so that way right you can hit like that and train like casting punches like those right i like these a lot i like these a lot yeah i mean this is i mean this but trevor's whole thing man you know it's all about making it so that fighters can do what they enjoy doing a lot longer and be healthy about it you know and he he's trevor's trevor's a g when it comes to uh adjusting and making what he needs to for the fighter so they can so they can continue to do

what they want to do um he's a judge like he's made he's made headgears for people to so because one of these fighters had a broken nose and he made a headgear and he's made he's made headgears for people to so because one of these fighters had a broken nose and he made a headgear and heger that he made with this guy it was it was sick how does this work this is weird because it's like both sides are male let's see here oh yeah so this this is um let me see it goes it goes on the inside it goes on the inside how does that work yeah it goes on the inside i gotta see that work? Yeah, it goes on the inside. I've got to see. Okay. Probably some weird shit you've got to talk to Trevor about.

Let me see. Or maybe it goes this way first. I bet that's exactly what it is. I bet it goes this way first. Yeah, that's exactly how it goes, like that. Oh, that is exactly what it is. It goes like this. Yeah, so you can pull the strap on it.

Yeah, and then the strap goes over. Okay, I see. And the strap goes over the top. These are great, man. Well, there's definitely room for improvement. The current state of MMA gloves, like the ones that UFC uses, they're better than the original ones that they had a few years back. They improved them maybe eight or nine years ago or whatever it was.

But still, those are better. Well, see, I mean mean and that's and that's where we are at onyx you know we just want to be able to get a product out there for the athletes and that they can they can use but it protects them because a lot of a lot of the injuries like 75 of them happen in training sure you know and if we can kind of cut that number down then they can have a lot more of these fighters making these dates yeah and for the most part for these fighters you can actually you know for you can have gear that protects you and you don't got to suffer these long injuries like these acls right you know it helped mitigate some of those things well you were a big part of the black zillions getting started yeah and

when you had that opportunity uh as a guy who was a former world champion to go there and sort of become a part of a team from the ground up, what did you try to do that was different than you had seen in other camps that you had participated in? I wanted to make it just like a, you know, the biggest thing back then, it was that there was, you always had to go to so many different places in order to just get that one thing. So I really wanted to just make it so that our guys didn't have a need to go anywhere else for anything else. And that was the whole idea behind the whole Black Zing. We brought in all kinds of people from every different aspect know, training to nutrition, almost every aspect of it. And that's what we wanted to provide our athletes with, just like the total game. So they really didn't have to do anything or worry about anything except for showing up to train.

And it worked for a while. It worked for a while, but it's a hard thing to maintain because that's in a very very expensive thing you know yes well glenn the guy who put up the cash i mean i had heard some outlandish figures that he had uh was in the hole for that place for by the time everything was up and running yeah yeah it was um it was a pretty it was a pretty pretty hefty ticket man it was a pretty hefty ticket, man. It was a pretty hefty ticket. And it was an expense that it did get out of hand. It did get out of hand. I'm sure. Yeah.

And here's the thing about it. Even his situation, he got himself in a situation where he was doing so much for people, it just became a thing that people expected out of him. And then when he wasn't able to do it anymore, then it was kind of like, you know, people were like, oh, man, this guy isn't this and he wasn't that. But he just he just wanted to do so much and had an idea to want to do to do things on another level. But at the same time, you know, the the finances of doing it was a massive undertaking i'm sure i mean all credit to dan lambert because dan lambert he's been doing this from the beginning yeah that fucking guy i mean he is the reason why these super camps got started dan lambert put his own money and then the new att they built he built himself from the ground up,

built the whole fucking building. And, you know, I haven't seen in person. I have friends that have gone to visit it, but I've seen it in videos and holy shit. Yeah, it's phenomenal.

I went inside of it. Dan's the man. Yeah, Dan is a good guy, man. You know, after the whole thing with the Black Zillions, you know,

him and I got to have a chance to spend some time together and just talk. There was so much weird animosity. It was weird. And then the UFC put that show together. Yeah, it's like I inherited beef with people that I didn't even know. I didn't even say hello to them. You know what I'm saying? That's so crazy.

And I just inherited this beef. And I was like, you know, it's silly. And especially the fact that ATT is like literally right down the street from my house it would be closer to go there than anywhere else but it was weird for a while but actually talking to dan and actually getting to know him and you know it was um it was it was a good it was a good thing because uh you know i got i got to get a lot of respect for for him and just for what he's done with american top team and att in general no he's a he's a brilliant guy i'm i love that guy as a person i'm a big fan of his i just love that a person like that like dan lambert can literally change the course of mma by setting

an example yeah and by having a gym that sets an example that's such a insanely high level so big so many world-class fighters there so much strength and conditioning everything under one roof dorms everything you want to say i think that was that was a thing that that kind of you know that that kind of pushed things uh in that in that position for glenn you know right he had to keep up he had to keep up or he was trying to outdo yeah he was trying to do uh dan lambert i always wanted to do something that dan wasn't doing you know good luck with that yeah it's a good way to go broke that's a good that's a good way to to spend a lot of money i'll tell you that yeah yeah there's i mean there's a lot

of super camps out there now it's interesting to see these places you have tri-star in montreal you have you know uh duke rufus in milwaukee you have Jackson, Winklejohn in Albuquerque. You got AKA. When you first started, there was not that many places. No, there really wasn't. And to even get what we wanted out of it, there's three gyms that we can go to. We'll go to either Jackson's in Albuquerque. We'll go to TriStar in Montreal.

Or we'll go to Denver, and we'll work with Trevor Whitman in Denver so we had the three camps that we bounce around from and and um that's where we go to get the most work in it and it worked for a while you know work for a while for the most part but just all that traveling it just became hard to do but that has to wear on you when you're in the middle of a camp and you're yeah staying in hotels and yeah, it does. Like when I was in camp, I really wouldn't travel too much. So what we would do is that if Nate Marquardt was in camp and he wanted to stay at home most of the time, so we'll stagger it where he'll have a tough guy in camp every single time. So I'll be a couple weeks when George wasn't there

or when Keith wasn't there or when keith wasn't there you know and then sometimes we'll all come together but for the most part we'll just all rotate into these gyms depending on who was fighting who needed the work he's a guy that i feel is underappreciated nate marquardt when he was at the very top of his game was a fucking assassin nate marquardt was... That knockout of Tyron Woodley in Strikeforce to this day is one of the nastiest in tight elbow combination knockouts

I think I've ever... Like a video game knockout. Crazy. Nate Marquardt was one of those guys I'm like, oh man, you'll get anxiety before training and practice because you knew

it was going to be a hard go. My training growing up in the sport was just... It was difficult man you know training with gsp keith jardine nate marco joey vila senor uh mike van arsdale and uh you know even ali abdilaziz was even up in a mix too but it was you know it was it was training with guys who like it was a hard go all the time, you know. And Nate was one of those guys that I'm just like, oh, my gosh. This dude is not going to get tired.

You know what I'm saying? He's good everywhere. He's super strong. It was just like one of those, like, all right, I got to bring it in order to compete today. Yeah, he was in that. He had this weird transition between ufc and strike force where people kind of forgot about him and then when he came back to the ufc you know he had some real good fights but he had already had a really long career yeah he had already had some really

tough fights and then really tough fights in training too right yeah yeah and that's the thing like back then we we weren't really too too smart like greg would kill us in training like we'd do some shit that you'd be like oh my gosh like one time greg had us doing like some buddy carries we're on the side of the sandia mountains and there's like you know it's like two or three feet and you'll fall to like your death and then we had to do like these buddy carries wedding carries where i'm holding keith like this get the fuck out of here. Yeah, and like this. You'll fall to your death if you make a mistake. There wasn't much room for mistake.

If I would have fell down, then we would have fell. But you take, and we had to rotate every 60 steps. Fuck that. And Greg was like, Greg was always on the like, you know, like mental, like, yo, you got to be ready to die. You got to be ready to face death. Let's get it. Seek death. Meanwhile, he's such a sweetie in the corner.

I know. In the corner. He's, hey, how you doing, Rashad? Oh, my gosh. Things looking great? That's why he does it, because he knows what he did to you in training. I can't imagine that. Buddy carries

Or wedding carry Like that And you're Literally if you fall You die You both die Yeah And then

There was like One little slip And he's like Alright let's Let's change things up Go on his back And I'm like What?

Fuck out of here Greg You go on his back bitch What are you doing? What are you talking about? That's so crazy It was crazy man But that was That was a good time This mental tough it was crazy man but that was um that

was a good time this mental toughness training huh yeah that was a mental toughness training well you guys that albuquerque team was always known for having crazy endurance i mean that had to come from some of that grit had to come from those hill workouts yeah we had a lot of grit because of those workouts that we did we did did one where we do the sand dunes. It was the worst, man. You would cry. Like you had to carry somebody up doing the sand dunes. And then if you didn't carry them all the way up,

then you had to do it again until you completed it. Like you would literally see grown-ass men crying. Just like, I can't do it no more. That's a good way to get injured too though unfortunately yeah it's like there's this fine line between pushing really hard and fucking somebody up yes yeah you know yeah i think now they've kind of figured it out but just the mental aspect it paid off big dividends like and i'll talk to dana white and dan like bro you were so fucking crazy back then you were so paranoid i back then. You were so paranoid. I'm like, your Dana White impression. You were paranoid back then?

I mean, I was a fighter, man. Fighters are always paranoid. You have to be paranoid if you're a fighter. You have to think that everybody's trying to take something from you. It's just the mindset. But he'll say I was crazy, I was paranoid because I didn't really trust him back then, but I'm just... He's a promoter.

Right. And then on top of that, you had Greg, Greg, Greg Jackson always telling you that they want to get you out of there, man. They want to get you out of the UFC, man. Go ahead and just quit, Evans. Just quit right now, man. I know you want to give up. They want to get you out of here anyways, man.

Like, no, no, I ain't going to quit. Then show them you're not going to quit. I know you want to give up. They want to get you out of here anyways, man. Like, no, no, I ain't going to quit. Then show them you're not going to quit. I don't want to see it. Let's go. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it was a good time over there, man. When you first started fighting, how much striking training had you done before you decided to compete in MMA? Because you had this wrestling base.

Did you have any striking training growing up did you do any i did boxing i did some boxing yeah and i did uh some some karate too i did tank pseudo oh okay yeah i did tank pseudo for like few years from the time i was like uh 13 to like 16 that makes sense because you always had good kicks yeah yeah like that sean salmon knockout but you know i never i never utilized my kicks like i should have my mom will always be like every time and rashad listen joe rogan joe she always say something that joe rogan said rashad joe rogan said you need to pass the guard rashad i'm like i don't even know what the guard is i need to pass the guard like what oh my gosh that's hilarious when i fought sean salmon she she's the one who told me to throw your kicks like bruce lee rashad and then when i threw the kick and knocked him down and the next day i talked to her on the phone

She said Rashad that was a good kick And I was like Okay But I don't like that dirty shit though And I was like Mom what you talking about Rashad you knew he was knocked out

You didn't have to hit him again Oh wow And I'm like Mom I'm like Mom You can't tell You just gotta keep going

Like the referee say Don't stop until I stop you And I was just in the fight. And she's like, Bastille Rashad is shit. That dirty shit. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. I was kind of surprised that you were head kicking more people unconscious after that.

You know, that's the thing, man. and head kicking more people unconscious after that. You know, that's the thing, man. I needed to really, really step out of my game and make sure I stepped out of my game more and more often. But I just, you know, after I switched things up and went from, you know, Jackson's to Florida, it was different because Mike Winklejohn, he was my guy. Like, it was like me and Mike Winklejohn had a really good relationship.

And he would work with me. And a lot of times we would work together. It was like a counseling session. We would just talk about life. You know what I'm saying? In between stuff. We'd talk about everything. And it was a fun training

session you know and and that's when you know he'll instill in me all these different things you know he'll be like oh yeah that kick is gonna work that kick is gonna work you know even with the overhand right when i caught chuck liddell he was telling me oh yeah that's the kick that's the that's the punch is gonna catch him that's gonna catch him that when i when i caught chuck the day before i was hitting that move because I was super nervous and I was hitting the overhand right and then left hook combination. And then he said, oh, yeah, that's going to be the punch. You're going to hit him with that and you're going to knock him out

and I'm not going to be able to get into the cage and congratulate you. That's what he said to me, word for word. And I'm just like, no way. And then it happened. I looked at him and I was like, oh, shit, it happened just like you said. That was like a gunshot happened just like you said that was like a gunshot i remember that shot i remember you landed that shot the smack of your fist hitting chuck and then seeing chuck crumbles like holy shit was that your most satisfying victory yeah

i think so i i it definitely was just because like going into that fight job, like the media sometimes can be so damn disrespectful. You know what I'm saying? Like they were just kind of like the questioning was like, you know, what have you even done to fight a guy like Chuck Liddell? People are asking that? I mean, pretty much in so many words, like, you know, what have I even done to you? But you had already at that point in time, had you fought for the title? No. That was before you fought for the title. time, had you fought for the title? No. That was before you fought for the title.

Yeah, before I fought for the title. It was the fight before, the fight before, right? The fight before, yeah. I only got a chance to fight for the title because I beat Chuck Liddell. Chuck Liddell was supposed to fight for the title. I was a serve-up to fight for the title. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, that was a serve-up. Well well the media was a little sloppy back then yeah so so there's some really good guys out there now and gals that are covering mma where they're real journalists they really are like real sports journalists back then it was like anybody with a camera who liked fights was also a lot of people that were trying to get attention just by being douchey yeah there was a lot of douchey sports guy talk i hate that stuff that that was driving me crazy would it be real disrespectful to fighters real dismissive of fighters so going into the fight i i felt that disrespect and i was like you know what man all right i'm like i don't care what happens i'm like this like i got i got a leash at least give a good showing for myself you know and that's and that's all i really cared about doing

you know i went out i walked out to the song um immortal technique is called uh that's my boy yeah i love that dude he's my friend oh yeah he. I love him. Yeah, I came out to this song, Point of No Return. And that song just really solidified everything I was feeling at that moment. There's a verse in there that says, the place that I'm from doesn't exist anymore. And I knew after I walked out to that fight, life would never be the same, whether I won or lost. That was the big moment for you. That was the big moment. There was no, I was not going to be the same Rashad after that fight, no matter what happened.

Amaral Technique has such great lyrics, man. Oh, my gosh. He's so smart. So smart. He's a smart dude. I'm so politically aware, geopolitically aware. He's got so much depth to his lyrics. I love that dude.

Yeah, he's like one of those guys you listen to and you just kind of keep putting it back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just say, oh shit.

Did he just say that shit? He's got a lot of oh shit lyrics. Yeah, like, oh shit. A lot of things that he says, you know, you go and you look it up afterwards,

like, okay. You know, he definitely had me looking up some things after I listened to him. Dude, you won the ultimate fighter as a heavyweight, which is so crazy. I know, because if you look at me now, I'm like a 170 fighter.

What do you weigh now? What are you walking around at? I'm consisting like 200. 200 pounds? 200 pounds. Wow. Yeah, that is like a 170 now in this day and age. Yeah, 200 pounds.

But I feel good, though, man. I feel really, 200 pounds. But I feel good, though, man. I feel really, really good. And it's a level that I didn't expect to feel this good. I didn't think that a diet can make me feel this good. What particularly makes you feel so good? In what way? Um, my energy, I have an energy level that it's really hard to, to say it kind of feels, uh, a bit supernatural in a bit, you know, like I feel, I feel energy. Like I feel, I feel like my body's energy. It feels, it's kind of hard to say. It's kind of like, not, not hard to say. It's kind of hard to describe without looking crazy. But you're obviously, by following this vegan diet, I'm seeing all these supplements you're taking, spirulina and all these different things. You're obviously doing it right, which is, you know, there's a lot of people that they're vegan, but they're eating like pasta and pizza and shit like that. They're just not doing it correctly in terms of taking in the proper amount of nutrients. Right. And that's,

and that's the thing about it. Like I, um, I read this book, the mucus list diet and it's by Dr. Arnold Errett. And this is like in the early 1900s, he came up with this book and he had some stomach issues and it was,

you know, not until he was fed up and was on like, you know what I'm like, he was starving himself. And then he realized he had some really like you know what i'm like he was starving himself and then he realized he had some really you know uh it kind of changes his his stomach situation so then he started looking into diet and nutrition and then he um he became a fruitarian and this book is talking about pretty much you know the role of food in your body and and what it does and what causes mucus and what doesn't cause mucus.

And, you know, through understanding the mucus diet and just reading it, it just gave me a different hold on understanding, like a different understanding of why I'm doing this. You know, and it came it became to me deeper than just like, oh, I can't have this because, you know, the diet says I shouldn't have it. It says I can't have it because, you know, this is going to cause inflammation. You know, I know the deeper reason of why. So it's easier for me to avoid the pitfalls of bad food, you know. There's also a situation with people where there's everyone. There's biological variability where some people, some diets just sync up well for them.

I know a lot of people that they don't feel good when they eat red meat. When they eat fish, they feel great. When they eat light foods, their body, for whatever it is, their digestion favors certain type of diet. Yeah, and that's what I found too because I don't know if this will work for everybody. It probably won't work for everybody. I mean, most likely it won't work for everybody. But for me, it was something that my body just was like, oh, it's about time you started to treat us the right way. Interesting.

And the crazy part about it is the fact that now I train less, but I can train harder. Like now I can do sparring sessions where like I spar for like an hour straight. Really? Yeah. And I'm sparring at a pretty good pace. Like I'm not like it's smart sparring. Like we're not like bashing each other in the head and shit like that. We're just being smart about it.

bashing each other in the head and shit like that we just we're we're being smart about it you know we're doing um you know a little bit lighter to the head but more more heavy shots to the body you know making those ones count um and just kind of like touching you know giving a nice shot to the head but not a like i'm gonna knock you out right shot to the head what type of foods are you eating like how are you what is a give me a typical meal for you um typically speaking uh it all depends on the time of the day but but i don't eat no more in a fast up until noon or until like one o'clock and then my first are you on like a 16 hour 14 hour like 16 like 16 uh intermittent fast and then um once i eat i usually eat like uh like i'll come home and i'll eat you know maybe like a hearty hearty shake that i make a fruit and then i'll put some um you know some some mushrooms and stuff in it and just like uh you know the cordyceps the the lion's mane

and you know from this uh brand life cycle. Sure. You heard of Lifecycle? With a K? So that brand right there makes this, you know, really good tincture that you just drop it in there and you don't got to worry about changing the flavor of too much of your shake. So I drop that in there with my shakes and stuff like that. And I usually take that. That would be my first meal.

Then the second one would be a little bit more hearty. It would be something with vegetables and maybe some potatoes or something. So it's a little bit more hearty. And then I'll have another hearty meal, like a vegetable type meal, vegetable based meal at nighttime. And then I'll usually be done for the day. Are you using any protein powders, pea protein, hemp protein, anything along those lines? No, I don't use any protein powders. Just vegetables, raw vegetables? Yeah, just raw vegetables.

Raw vegetables and fruit. Yeah, and I don't really feel like I have a need for it. I feel like my muscle mass is pretty good. I don't feel like I'm too skinny or I'm not gaining any muscle. I feel like I can gain muscle. And, you know, it's just been working for me. So basically you just eat to feel good, like however it makes you feel good. Yeah, right.

And you've got it down now. You know like what kind of foods. The supplement thing gets strange with vegans. You know, there's a lot of folks that they're mixing a lot of different dietary yeasts and a lot of different powders and different things and blending these different things and it's uh some people don't like the way that feels when you're eating like that but it sounds like what you're eating is much more whole food based yeah mine is just whole food based like a lot of the foods that i became actually a good cook now because of the fact that i had to learn to cook

my own food. My wife, she was busy doing her own thing. So she wasn't able to cook for me like she was before. But then I learned myself. And through learning myself, it just completely took the shackles off of me. You know what I'm saying? Right. Cooking nice meals. Yeah.

know what i'm saying right so cooking nice meals yeah so now i um i cook a lot of like west indians type of foods because they have a really good vegetarian uh menu like a lot of chickpeas um and and things of that nature there's a really good vegetarian indian place around here that i go to sometimes i love indian food yeah it's really good i haven't gone in a month because i've been on this carnivore diet, but this place was fantastic. Really interesting, weird, you know, vegetable dishes. Everything's vegetarian. You know, I guess with them it's a religious thing. A lot of Indians are vegetarian. Yeah, vegetarian.

And I like a lot of Indian food just because of that, you know. And that whole food diet, it just works for me. But like you said, these supplements like this, this this makes me like i feel like when i drink this like spirulina and just eat a lot of greens and uh even even like the mushrooms you know the quarter set mushrooms and stuff like that like i just have energy to just go and go and go that lifestyle cycle tincture somebody gave me some of that yeah yeah i gotta have them send's very good. I got to have them send you some. I got to have them send you some. They have a really nice tincture set that they sent out. I should have brung it. But it has reishi.

It has turkey tail, lion's mane, cordyceps. And it even gives you a schedule on when you should take it and when it's best for. It even gives you, you know, a schedule on when you should take it and when it's best for. But it's a really, really good mushrooms because, you know, they infuse theirs with this cockadoo plum. It's a cockadoo plum. You ever hear of that? No, it's a funny name. Yeah, I know. So this cockadoo plum is from Australia, and it's like one of the most high in vitamin C fruits there is.

It's way higher in vitamin C than oranges and everything else like that. Cockatoo plum? Yeah, cockatoo plum. Okay. Yeah. K-A-K-A-D-U plum. That sounds like something that a little kid would be eating now. It's a cockatoo plant.

Yeah. What? But that's, I mean, it's a cockadoo plant yeah what but that's i mean they um it's it's a really really good supplement and uh i don't really like to recommend supplements too much but that's one that i i take and i'm like man i feel i feel way better off do you eat a lot of beets i do i do i do be beets are really good it's supposed to be really good for endurance. Beets are really good. Beets are supposed to be really good for endurance. Yeah, beets are really good. But it's crazy, like, just eating greens like I've been eating greens. I just don't – I feel like I don't get tired like I used to.

Like, my body's just instantly recovering. What was your old diet like? What was it like when you're training for a fight? What would typical meals be like? It was pretty clean, but it was – I would eat a lot of meat i would eat a lot of meat and and uh i'm o positive so i'll eat like a lot of red meat and i felt really good when i ate red meat like it felt as if like when i eat red meat it almost felt like i can feel it like within like the next 20 30 minutes like my body breaks it down really fast you you know? Yeah. So I felt good eating it, but I didn't feel like I had the endurance.

Like I didn't feel the endurance aspect like I do right now, you know? I see what you're saying. So that's been like the best that I ever felt was when I fought Tito Ortiz. I was eating red meat, but I also was coupling that up with a lot of spinach. I was eating a lot of spinach. Like I would go and get a big bag of spinach. Yeah, that's exactly what I was doing. I'd get a big bag of spinach and I would just put it in a blender and just grind it up and then throw like some apples in it to make it a little bit sweeter to change the taste so it wouldn't be so greenish like a green grass.

And then I would just drink those all the time, but it just made me feel so strong. Interesting, interesting. Now, did you used to work with a nutritionist at all? I did, yeah, I did. I worked with... Because when you were cutting weight, like, how many fights did you have at 85? Two, two fights at 85.

Was that too much of a struggle? Yeah, it was too much of a struggle. Like, I'm in a weird position, because I'm not a very big person. I'm not big enough to be a light heavyweight but i'm not small enough to be a middleweight either like and feel like i can you know like so i was like in that weird weird space so when i cut down to 185 i felt like it felt drained drained i just didn't have the the movement in the pop you know but then at 205 i kind of felt undersized you know back then what did you walk around at back then i was

walking around around like 225 230 and what was different because it was from eating the meat yeah from eating the meat from eating the meat i would get that alone has got to probably increase your endurance just the loss of that much body mass yeah 20 plus pounds that your body doesn't have to pump blood through yeah you're absolutely right about that you know yeah so that just came off naturally when you stopped eating meat yeah and and another thing too like i would um you know this is another reason why like because when i wasn't fighting that was the problem because I would get into these bad eating habits because I would always know that when I had training camp, I can just cut the weight and just lose it like that. But after a while, that just becomes your habit. Anything you do over time, that becomes your habit.

It becomes your lifestyle. And I was eating a lot of sugar, drinking a lot of booze and shit like that so i was like man i need to make a change for my life for the rest of my life you know right and that's why this whole lifestyle fits so much better than me you know do you think that would have changed your career had you eaten this way back when you were competing i think so i think it would have but at the same time i don't i don't know in which way. You know what I'm saying? Right. You may have been too chill.

Yeah, yeah. Because you're so calm now. Yeah, I feel like I was what I needed to be at the time I needed to be it. You know? I see, yeah. And I feel like there are some aspects of my awareness because that's what I would call it more than anything. I hate to say, oh, I'm woke now, because I hate that whole woke thing. But I feel.

Real woke is great. Yeah, but. Real woke. But you know what it is? The problem is people could take it too far, and then really it's about getting other people to comply with your idea of wokeness. And then it becomes almost like a religion. Yeah. You just want people to comply with your ideas about how to speak and how to talk and how to live.

Exactly. You just become a dictator, a little woke dictator. That's what it is. But the idea of being woke, meaning aware, you're spiritually cognizant of your effect on people, the life that you live. And that's all beautiful. That's great. The problem is it gets abused because people want to pretend that they have virtue, so they adopt this woke pattern, and then they try to force it on other people,

and then they're fucking annoying, and then it pisses other people off that may be inclined to think that maybe it's good to be kinder, good to be more open, and then they hear those fucks, and they're like, fuck these people. I'm going to vote for Trump again, and that's what happens i i i hear that i definitely hear that i hear that because that's what um that's how i would i would say it like for me it was more or less just awareness of of myself and i didn't really i was aware of myself but I didn't really have the awareness like I didn't like how do I it's it's almost to the point where I'm

just more cognizant of every single choice that I make you know and and and just and that's something I really didn't didn't care about or really didn't think about before you know and just that awareness right there it uh it brings a whole new different understanding of life but i i was i was like that person when i first woke i'm just like oh man why ain't this person woke and i wanted to wake up everybody and it was it was the most frustrating thing in the world and that's why i was like you know what i i just i won't do it man isn't that what always happens when people find something interesting like that's what happens when people start doing crossfit it's happens when people start doing interesting, like that's what happens when people start doing CrossFit.

It's happens when people start doing jujitsu, they just can't shut the fuck up about it. And it happens when people take on, you know, a new spiritual philosophy. Yeah. They, they want everybody to understand how they're doing it and that you should do it this way too.

When people believe in what they're doing, they want to, they want to share it, but they also want other people to do it too. if i can convince you to live my way then it validates the way i'm living right because look i got that's so true rashad's woke too now why don't you be woke right and then you know and then you start just trying to spread it but i think that i mean everybody has their own awakening you know and if some people may not have that in this life. You know, they may never have that awakening.

Some people are burdened by their environment as well, right? There's too much stress and anxiety. You can't even see it. Sometimes you don't have space. And that's why I even give a nod to the psychedelics in that respect. If you don't have the ability to have that mental space there is something that can help have you have that you know the insight that somebody who was who was doing all the meditation because all you really need to do is feel it to understand

why you need to do it yes and and that's why i was i'm lucky that i was able to feel it so now it's nothing for me to meditate and and go all these, you know, spiritual practice because I know that is something real. But beforehand, I was like, man, that shit is not real. I don't believe that, man. Like, oh, yeah, you feel an energy, huh? Like, I mean, I used to I used to be one of those guys. But until I went through it, I'm just like, you know, I don't have that understanding. Well, it's hard to see the result. You kind of have to trust the process. It's hard to see the result before you've experienced it.

You kind of have to trust the process, go through it. Then something for me, a big one is yoga. I'm a big believer in yoga and not just for physical reasons, for mental reasons. It helps me tremendously. And when I don't do it, I'm good. Legitimately, I should do yoga twice a week because I'm really only good for about three days after yoga class. I need to just really balance out. If I was doing it three times a week,

there's not a thing in the world that could fuck with me mentally. I'd be like, I'm fine. See, I've done the the beacons yoga and that shit was just so hot i really couldn't i really couldn't focus that's the key though i know but that's that's it but i wasn't where i wasn't where i am right now you should do it now so tell me so tell me like like when you you go to beacom oh yeah yeah yeah yeah well my my place is not affiliated with beacham anymore because he's got arrested for some scumbaggery. He's actually been arrested.

I don't think he can come to America. I think that's the thing. I think he's got to stay in hiding. The thing about it at that guru life, that's the problem. It is a problem. It really is a problem when any one person has that much influence over so many people, particularly a male having so much influence over females that worship him, especially if you're a scumbag. And he – there's a thing about this. He did not invent those postures, and he didn't even invent that sequence.

He brought it to America, and he popularized doing it in very hot rooms. unpopularized doing it in in very hot rooms uh the benefits though forget him take him out of the equation because there's so many people that practice it and they've had incredible benefits from it it's it's really unfortunate that it's connected to this very controversial individual because then people associate Bikram yoga with this guy that's been you know accused of multiple sexual assaults and rapes and all these different things but you take that away from him as a human being and the people that practice it what they get from it first of all you know exactly what you're going to do every day there's 26 postures and two breathing exercises one breathing exercise in the beginning 26 postures one breathing exercise

the end it's 90 minutes It's 90 minutes at 105 degrees. And it's fucking brutal. And I did it right before I got here. I do it. I like to do it in the mornings, first thing in the morning. I do it before I've eaten anything. I go through a 90 minute yoga class. I really like doing it that way. And then at the end of the day, I have a couple of different places that I do it at. I like to mix it up. but that hot yoga for me is the way to go because first of all it's i know the postures they all they all serve a purpose in terms of like helping my body helping my balance keeping my flexibility strengthening my joints there's so many really positive physical benefits from it and then to the meditation aspect of it because no matter what kind of bullshit i have going on

in my life if i just breathe and think about the exercise and then you know my brain starts racing and i'll forget what i'm doing and i'll start thinking about other shit but i bring it back bring it back bring it back breathe just breathe you're not going anywhere for 90 minutes you're locked in this room literally the door's locked when the class starts so i am just breathing and going through these and i know that i can get through it because i've done a thousand times before just breathe and get through it and there's a cleansing of like all the your brain there's like residual there's residue of like shitty thoughts bouncing around inside your brain anxieties and fears and regrets and anger

and frustration and all this shit that's in your head that just gets in the way of clear thinking it gets in the way of being able to see things in an objective beneficial way and to be able to see things the way other people seem as well like sometimes i you know i have this issue i think a lot of people do that i don't see how other people are seeing things i see how i see I see things right and then I go well okay well let me let me look at it from their way let me just abandon oh no no well they're fucking wrong that's why abandon all that shit and try to look at it from other people's ways I feel like what yoga does for me is it allows me to be free it allows me to clean up all my preconceived notions and clean out all my misconceptions and just see things

see things for how they are and i always feel better always see i gotta try that oh it's the best especially now that you're on this uh vegan diet i'm telling you you're on that path anyway the yoga is it's just so good for straightening your fucking head out man i always want to try that kundalini yoga that's the shit that's supposed to make you trip yeah i've had a bunch of friends do it they say my friend denny he's he's done it and had like sir and he's done dmt too he's like dude it's the same goddamn thing that's what you have full-blown visions you have full-blown psychedelic visions yeah that's the thing like it like when i like when i do like uh the dmt i don't have like i don't have uh it's weird i don't have like those visions those visions okay that's because you're doing five methoxy

dimethyltryptamine divisions come from nn dimethyltryptamine yeah yeah totally different thing i've done both i've done that i've done that before that you've done nn yeah and you have no visions um you know i i have visions it's kind of like, it's just like silly things though sometimes. Like I've seen, like one time I did it, I've seen like this half, like it was like I awake and I'm in a place and I'm just with these three massive beings like tall as a building. And they were like half human and they were half snake and like i had a snake from the waist down and that had a human from the waist up but had like a snake face whoa yeah and that's that was one of the visions that i had what do you think that represented i don't know but it was weird because during that experience it was like

they were all like i was all three of them were staring at me and they were looking down and then one of them reached for me and then i started going up and then i started going around their body and then i went around the body and then as i was going around the body every once in a while i would see the face of of of it and it would like open up like a cobra and then it would close but it wasn't scary it wasn't terrifying and i went all the way up the body and it was like i was able to see from another angle like me up in the body and and then it like opened me up like a like a like a flower or something like that it was weird and then my trip went like super super fast so you

definitely have had visions yeah i just can't can't quite make out like what it what's it supposed to be yeah what's this i had a bunch of jokers giving me the finger the last time a bunch of uh jesters like court gestures nothing like that man, I've never seen nothing like that, man. It was ridiculous. I heard about the machine. They were all like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you. All like circling me. Like infinite numbers of jesters. Oh my gosh. Basically, the feeling that I got was like, oh, I take myself too seriously.

And these jesters were just going, fuck you. Like, you don't like that. You don't like when someone goes, fuck you. No. So they were going, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you. And there was like, but they weren't saying the words, So they were going Fuck fuck fuck fuck you And it was like But they weren't saying the words But they were definitely

Giving me the finger But there was like An infinite number of Gestures surrounding me Going Like giving me like This vibrating finger And I was like

Oh But it was clear What they were saying Like hey bitch You take yourself too seriously And then I was like You're right You're right

And once I was saying You're right They were like Nodding at me Like mmhmm Okay See that's what i like i like to be able to work like that's work yeah that's work right there like you went you went and you worked through something you know yes yes i think when you work too hard at something and you're trying to achieve something like oftentimes you think very highly of yourself like that's what you like i should you know my netflix special is to be the shit.

This is going to be the best one I've ever done. I'm going to fucking show everybody how good this is. And they were like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you. And I was like, okay, all right, yeah, you're right. I was like, you're right. This is silly. It's like I'm just alive for a certain amount of time, and I shouldn't think that way.

I mean, there's part of you that gets trapped in thinking that way because you're trying to do something but you don't have to think that way to do the thing right you know yeah i so so that's the thing like um like those visions and being able to like when i did ayahuasca i didn't have any visions man i didn't have anything like i had i had a i got into a pretty uh pretty good but I didn't have the typical teaching lessons everybody else has when they do something like that. That seems like you probably didn't get a strong enough dose. No, I did three large, two large cups. The thing is with that, and I'm speaking just from people talking to me about it because I've only done the pure DMT. I haven't done the ayahuasca.

Oh, you haven't done the ayahuasca. People say that a lot of these people that are making it, either they're not making it correctly or they're making a light dose because they're worried about gringos going crazy and they don't want to be responsible for that shit. want to be responsible for that shit so i know people that have gone and they've had these experiences where they've done it with someone in america or someone who's done through a more commercial sort of organization and it wasn't really that strong or profound and then they went and did it with someone who was real someone was making some fucking super high grade you know 97 octane shit and they're like oh that's what i need because i feel i feel like i after that i felt like like damn i must be i must be broke man i'm like like i'm like i must be i must be i must be broken like i can't like i can't even feel the the the damn ayahuasca but it

it um it was it brought like it didn't it didn't give me the experience i i wanted but it gave me the experience that i needed you know and that's and that's something that i i got after i was like over the disappointment of it i was like you know what i didn't get what i wanted but i definitely got what i needed you know because whenever you sit in a circle and stuff like that it's always an amazing cathartic thing where you just kind of just like shed and just go through those emotions. Just watching other people just be so raw with their emotions and just kind of feeling that, you know, just through symbiosis, you kind of like start to feel like the work come through you. You know, that's how I felt anyways. Now, are you working a lot with fighters now?

Are you working with young fighters? Are you doing it in any official capacity or are you just with young fighters are you doing in any official capacity or are you just doing it because you're at the gym um i i just do i just train because i'm at the gym but i like to uh i like to train with the guys when i'm in there because i go i go uh i can go at a good pace and i don't i don't mind if they they hit me up a little bit you know and i and i will give them a look at some of some of the training partners you know won will give them a look that some of the training partners won't give them. So, yeah, I enjoy that aspect of it, but I haven't been like, oh, I'm going to come in here. I haven't dedicated myself to someone's full camp. One of the reasons why I say this is because a lot of people that I talk to that have trained with you and work with you,

one of the things they really like about you is your guidance, is that you're a guy that they could sit down and talk to about things and you have a very learned and wise perspective and that could be especially with you know you consider your successful career that could be like very beneficial for young fighters coming up and i just wanted to know like had you ever thought about becoming a trainer yeah i think about all the time and i and i've um I work with some fighters now. Like I have this team out in Michigan, Team Mercy Lago, my old coach Joaquin Rodriguez, he's like the head guy there. But him and I work together, and we try to bring some of the fighters out

and try to get them to bigger shows and stuff like that. But those fighters, you know, I work with a lot. You know, my godson is one of those fighters there, Devin Smith. And I work with him in trying to get him to just not only fight at a certain level, but mentally bring himself to a certain level. And he's always hated because he's always like, man, you always try to be like Yoda, try to give me a Yoda lesson. I'm like, no, I'm not trying to be Yoda.

I'm just trying to – I just want to tell you. I hope you're like Ken. Yeah. Because one time he hit me up. He's like, oh, man, I'm ready to come down. I'm ready to train. I'm like, okay, you ready to come and train? I'm like, all right, so have you been training?

And he's like, no. And I'm like, hmm. And I'm like, so what makes you think it's going to be different if you come and train with me? I mean, you still have to train. And he's like, I better get to the gym, huh? That's one of the weirdest conversations i've ever had with people that go you know what man if i train i think i'd be a fucking world champion like okay i don't even know where to start with that right i don't even know what to say there okay if i've meditated i think i can see through walls i'm not gonna meditate though like what does that

mean i know people have weird ways of looking at themselves you know where they just decide they're special without putting in any work. You know, like they decide there's something about them that makes them different. Yeah. And they want that to be the case, but they don't want to work towards it. It's a weird trap that you see in young people where they just convince themselves there's something significant about them. You know, and that's a real problem with young guys that get into fighting that have a delusional perspective and they'll accept fights they shouldn't accept yeah so like i'll fight that motherfucker that guy has 30 fights you have one are you crazy you know but

that i think that i see that more with with the kids and it's this next generation just because we're such a voyeuristic community i mean society now and i think now people just see somebody like oh yeah i can do that but not really realizing like you said all the the guts that go into what make them good at what they do well there's there's lessons that are out there if you just pay attention look here's a great lesson conor mcgregor versus floyd mayweather one guy has zero pro boxing matches one guy's the greatest of all time yeah and somehow another they sold us on this thing and we all paid money me included and we watched this fight that was exactly how any expert would tell you it's going to go down floyd's going to fuck him up there's another one

the maybe even more egregious one because at least conor mcgregor was a world champion combat sports athlete and a wicked fighter right there was a lion fight where they had Lurdzilla. Do you know who Lurdzilla is? No, I don't know who he is. Ooh, he's a motherfucker. This Thai dude, he's a motherfucker. And he fought this dude with zero pro Muay Thai fights. I think Lurdzilla has 300 Muay Thai fights.

Oh, my God. And he fought this dude and played with him and then head kicked him into another dimension. But he head kicked him off the front leg just whap! And the dude folded. It's a crazy chaos.

How did the fight even get set up like that? I don't know. I think maybe he had another opponent and that opponent got injured and dropped out and then this MMA fighter

decided to try his hand at Muay Thai so he jumped in there in a Muay Thai fight against arguably one of the greatest Muay Thai fighters alive you should watch Lurdzilla's highlight reel first of all he's super elusive he's unusually elusive fighter but he hit this motherfucker with a left high kick just off the front leg just whipped it up off the front leg and caught him on the chin folding him and I was like, whoever said yes to that

fight, whatever commission allowed that fight to take place, you guys should have to go to trial. Someone should sit down with you and go, how the fuck did you allow this to take place? That sounds crazy as hell, man. Zero pro fights versus

300. I mean, maybe he didn't have 300, maybe he had 264 or some crazy shit like that. But he's Lurdzilla. I mean, Lurdzilla is a famous Muay Thai fighter. Oh, did you find it? Yeah, here it is. Oh, that's the dude after he got crumpled. But go before that.

Go before that so you can watch. I mean, Lurdzilla is just fucking him up from the beginning. And credit to the dude for thinking he could take the fight and step it up. But Lerdzilla basically just battered this fucking guy. You can tell the look on his face he's just playing with him. Yes. Well, Lerdzilla's brilliant, man. Look at that.

Oh, my gosh. Look at that. And that was one knockdown. He got up after that? Yeah. He knocked him out after that. He knocked him out. Watch his front leg.

Teep. Watch it. Smack. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, folds him him that's a complete total mismatch like if that dude was doing that in sparring to that guy everyone would be mad at him everybody be like hey man this guy's not on your level don't fuck him up yeah like take it light on him be nice look at this teep smack oh my god hands down not worried about shit playing

with him and the whole fight's like that And Lordzilla's a beast man He's fun to watch He's really That damn kick was lightning fast Lightning fast Wow Off the teep Teep

And then no wind up No switch Just cracks him in the face with it Dude that's crazy He's brilliant That guy's brilliant But that's a crazy mismatch So a guy could say

I'll fucking fight this guy Someone needs to grab you And go hey man No No Don't do it Don't do it You think you can hit the bag I'll fucking fight this guy. Someone needs to grab you and go, hey, man, no. Don't do it. Don't do it. You think you can hit the bag.

You think you can hit hard. You think you can do all these things. You're about to get in there with a master, a guy who has mastered this one particularly brutal combat sport. Don't do that. There's nothing worse than when you're in a match when you feel that damn outmatched by somebody i was uh i was doing jujitsu and i think i was going with a hodja gracie and i always felt like i was doing pretty i was like i feel like i'm pretty all right and then when i went with him he was just on me and i and it was just like just toying with me you know what i'm saying like i felt like i couldn't make a right move, and I'm just like, man, this sucks. This is the worst.

It's the worst. And then he got on top of me. And normally if I get on somebody, I can hold them down pretty well, but it was just a different level. And I'm just like, wow. Yeah, those old school guys like Haja Gracie, Sal Hubera, Jandre, Shandy Hubero,

those guys have that pressure top game. There's something about that old school jiu-jitsu pressure game, but Salah's a master at that. Shonji's a master at that. Rafael Lovato's a master at that. That smashing pressure game. But Hodger is not just a master that he's also like his physical attributes he's so long and tall yeah that oh that longness and he know he's smush

he's got he's got uh like you know that long leverage that tall strength oh yeah oh man that tall strength it's a different kind of strength than somebody long and tall and strong. Oh, my gosh. Well, that's a big advantage John has. Yes. You see John use that on people. Yeah. That long strength is the best grappling strength. It's like those guys that have that. I feel like that body, that John Jones body, is the perfect body for MMA because he's strong.

He's tall. Yeah, he's strong with it. He's tall and thin, but he's also strong as fuck. Like he's muscled enough but he also has that extra length yeah and his legs are perfect too they're skinny at the you go down and get really skinny so they're really fast too yeah i'm just watching him throw kicks i'm like man he's throwing those legs like it's effortless you know his calves are ridiculous they don't even make sense like how are those on your body right how are those on your body you look at his shoulders

his shoulders are massive they got skinny they go down those little calves like what what's going on here and he kicks the hell out of you with those little skinny legs too crazy and there hasn't been many people that have been able to exploit the fact those calves are so small they haven't really been able you would think that like with everybody this trend in calf kicks tiagoago Santos tried it. He hit them with some good ones for sure, but John figures it out eventually, and then he just starts checking them. He checked most of them against Dominic. Most of those low calf kicks he checked.

He checked them. He just saw them coming. How do you even check a lower leg kick? It just turned out. It turned out. He just made it so that he was going shin to shin. They went shin to shin a lot. Yeah, I've seen that.

It's real hard to check, though. Yeah, it's really hard to check. It's also real hard to just take. You could take those thigh kicks if you're conditioned a little bit. And just like you said, he had to make a choice to take it how he wanted it. But he's still taking the shot. He's still going shin to shin. Yeah, he's still going shin to shin.

But they're both feeling it. That's the difference. they're both feeling it that's the difference they're both feeling it when you get when you get the meaty part of that bone part that's when you get that sciatic nerve and that's when that's when you you you shut down like chandler did the key had no choice his leg was like nope not today too in the second fight with mighty mouse his leg shut down yeah your nerve just shuts off and your foot doesn't work it's numb It's just dangling. You try to stand on it and shit just collapses. The Chandler fight, they were trying to tell him his leg's broken.

And he's like, I'm fucking fine. Leave me alone. You know, and I think that fight should not have been stopped. I think you've got to give, but the referee should know and the doctor should know this is what happens. Maybe just give it a few minutes to recover. If he can survive the onslaught during that time his leg will come back

and I think in Chandler it probably would have and Cejudo it did Cejudo figured out how to just sort of chuck and jive with Mighty Mouse

and I don't think Mighty Mouse knew the extent that his leg was numb but it recovered when you get hit like that though for a second

you're like this motherfucker's cheating like you feel like you feel it for a second you feel like this motherfucker's cheating like you feel like you feel it for a second you feel like this motherfucker is cheating because it hurts so bad like and it's very rare to have something that hurts you immediately in mma like there's there's not many strikes that can hurt you immediately right that's that's one of them that hurts you that nerve yeah you feel it immediately isn't it weird that that went on forever until benson hend Henderson started doing it to people?

Yeah. He was the first in MMA, in my opinion, at a high level to start chopping at those lower legs. Real low. Real low. Right above the ankle. He'd fuck people up with that. He would kill people with those lower legs. But now that is the move.

Everybody's doing it now. It's a staple. It's funny how MMA does it, though. It goes through all these cycles now yeah and i think now people are really starting to find a home for those uh those oblique kicks that john yes you know yes the winkle john camp they're weird though because if you graze off it leaves you in a weird place because you you're kind of your foot's turned outward and you can get hit with punches you're in a weird punching range where you're not in a good stance to fire back because your foot is sort of pronated outside.

Yeah, pronated outside. It's a great kick, though. You know who fucking throws the shit out of that? Lorenz Larkin. Oh, yeah. He throws that shit to the body. When he fought Neil Magny, he threw that oblique kick to the body, and I was like, oh, my goodness.

That motherfucking kick, though. He's good. He can kick. When I'm watching him kick, I'm just like, oh, my gosh. He's so fast, too. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I was really interested to see how he was going to do over in Bellator, but then he had that crazy war with Paul Daly.

You can't get in a war with Paul Daly. No. That dude's left hand is one of the best weapons in the sport, period. He got that one hitter. He got that heat. That left hand's ridiculous it's crazy right it's crazy it's stupid it's stupid just to have that kind of power in his hands there's certain guys that just have that like rumble oh my god rumble and now he's going

to come back as a heavyweight he said yeah and he's looking good he's in training he's in training now and rumble versus dominic reic Reyes. How about that? How about that? That would be crazy. How about that? Rumble scares the fuck out of everybody. You might beat him, but you also might get knocked into another dimension. Because he hits like, I mean, he's been my training partner for the longest time. And he knows.

I'm like, Rumble, don't be going crazy,'s like i ain't gonna you know i ain't go crazy i go crazy and we train we train smart but i mean there's a couple times he hit me i'm like man i'm not your friend anymore don't you fucking talk to me i told you don't hit me like that dude when he knocked out glover with one punch i was like holy shit you do that to glover to shara i know that's crazy and the thing about his punches is like you can't really gauge how like you don't know which one is gonna be that shot because it kind of yeah they come at he likes to moves his hands around a lot too yeah yeah so you don't know which one's gonna be the one to touch you yeah and they come from all angles here he is in shape now he's been training with hoofed he looks good he looks gigantic it's so hard to believe that guy

was ever 170 i am so baffled so by how the fuck he made that weight so this is over at uh the new gym stanford look at him man just so what is the new gym called it's called it's called stanford the team's called stanford mma now okay and who. And who's running that? It's the same people. It's Henry Hoof. Sanford. Yeah, Sanford. No T. Sanford MMA.

Yeah. And so it's all the Black Zillion guys? Yep, all the Black Zillion guys. Look at that. Rory and Robbie Law are training together there now. Yeah, Rory's been there getting some work in the last couple weeks. How long has this gym been around for? Man, so this is H-Kickboxing.

Oh, okay. It just has a different name. Yeah, just different name. So we just now moved into that gym on a more consistent basis. It looks beautiful. Yeah, I mean, they spent, I think, like a couple million on it. They spent some money on that gym. And this is in the same place as where the way the black zillions was the same area

same area yeah yeah so we had we had the black zillion gym and then we went to a gym uh that's that was at this um this like amusement park for kids it was like it's called extreme action park and that's what we had a section that we we had there and then they also added this gym too so now they're gonna have they're gonna keep that gym that at extreme action park but also keep this one south florida man what a hotbed for martial arts right it really is man so much jujitsu down there oh man you can yeah you got cyborg right down the street and cyborg is is amazing and you know mario sperry not too far down what happened with mario because mario was the head coach for a while of the black zillions right and he was inspirational as fuck oh mario would give those speeches and i

was like oh i get goosebumps yeah mario was the best i just think that him and um him and glenn didn't work out when it came time to it and all the work and chemistry together you know because that that was that was the hardest thing because you know having all those different coaches and trying to not only have them get along with the fighters, but then have them get along with each other and not try to fight for that who's the main coach and who's the main guy. And coaches sometimes have bigger egos than the fighters. And sometimes it's more deadly because they're not accomplished. And a lot of times they're coaching because they don't feel that accomplishment. So that coaching becomes that thing that they want to be validated for.

Right, right, right. It's so hard to find that balance. And the ones who find it, they're so cherished. The guys like Mark Henry, the guys like Trevor Whitman. Mark Henry, the guys like Trevor Whitman, you know, I mean, those, those Firasahabi, Duke Rufus, those coaches that are like legit coaches that everybody loves, man. They're so cherished. They are.

They're so valuable because also for a fighter like Trevor Whitman's holding pads for you. Like, holy fuck, I'm training with Trevor motherfucking Whitman. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's something to that. If you go to Montreal and you're in Firasahabi's gym, you're like, holy shit, that is Firas Ahabi talking to me. Absolutely, man. There's some power to that. There's a power.

And you start to believe it. You start to believe anything they're saying. If he tells you you're good, outstanding, excellent. Firas, you're like, oh, shit, Firas just said that. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy, man, to see where these, like, Firas. I remember when he wasn't even a coach.

He was just a fighter. Like, when I first started going to Montreal. He wasn't the coach yet He was really still he was still fighting. Yeah Wow It's still fighting. He's such a good coach. He is phenomenal. He's such a genius person when you talk to him So he's always recommending books and shit He's always recommending listen to this guy cuz this guy has the like he told me about a competitive shooter what is that guy's name lammy lammy the the guy who wrote that the winning mindset anyway he wrote lammy i wrote it down somewhere i have the book at home that i've been reading lately where the fuck is it god damn it i can't remember but anyway point is he's always

recommending me shit he's always got something something interesting that he's been paying attention to that he can relate to mma and to fighting and he's he's very very keenly aware of the mental battles that are going on and how much visualization is important and meditating. Lamby Bassam. Lamby Bassam, yeah. The guy was a competitive target shooter, and he spent more time practicing in his head than he did practicing. Wow. More time visualizing.

That works. That really does work. It does something. Because when I was, like I said, when I was hurt for the Rampage fight in training camp, I would visualize a lot. How would you do it? I would just sit there and I would just kind of like, I would go through moves in my mind and I would go through techniques and I would just kind of go over and over again the techniques in my mind. I would also do scenarios where I fight in almost every single situation. I also do scenarios where I fight in almost every single situation. Like I find myself, you know, losing and then finding a way to come back after I've been rocked, you know, and just trying to find myself just mentally working through it.

Mentally working through it almost every single fight. Like I'll go round by round. Really? Yeah, I'll go round by round and I'll just like, okay, I'll set up the scenario. Okay, I'll come out and I'll catch him with a a punch and then I'm just imagining what happens after that. And then I put myself in adversity, adversity, adversity every single time I can as much as I can. So then that way I find myself always, you know, I get myself out of adversity. Sometimes I just find myself just smoking them.

But it's always these different mental mental games and me just doing something executing and always just doing it right so it's almost like you were fighting without having to fight yeah you were getting the experience of fighting in your head by just visualizing it would you set a certain amount of time that you would do it um no i would just i would just i would just go with the flow you know i had um my wrestling coach in college tom minko he was always he was always on uh like i was i was like i get nervous i get nervous i don't know what to do with the nervousness and he says well he says you're nervous because you're thinking too much about about about it he said just just think about executing don't think about the outcome just

think about executing your technique and just only think about executing your technique and how it feels to complete the perfect execution of the technique. When you hit the pad and it hits that and it sounds that, you know, you hear that pop. You know, how does that feel? You know, become attached to how you feel when you execute something. And then that's what you start to base your fight off of, you know, how you feel when you execute versus all the things that can happen if something goes wrong. Yeah, it's really interesting to see the different strategies that people employ in order to focus the mind. So many different fighters have different ways of doing it.

Some fighters like to meditate. Some fighters like to shadow box their way through scenarios, almost like they're thinking about how the fight's going to go down while they're slow motion doing things. I would get in the mirror sometimes. I'll yell in the mirror. I'll yell up in fear like, come on. I would get into it because a lot of times I would get so nervous

that I would be like, oh, my God, I just don't want to freeze out there. I just don't want to freeze, you know. So I would like that's that's part of the reason why I started twisting my nipples. Like I go out there and I twist my nipples for the fight. And that was just to kind of do something stupid and silly. Right. But then it would allow me to just kind of relax. So I'm like, well, I'm not going to embarrass myself any worse than that.

That's funny. I always, I remember always wanting to ask you about that. Why do you guys do that? I was just doing just like, you know, I'm not gonna embarrass myself worse than that. Did George used to do that shit too?

George would do it. Yeah. George, George would do it because you know, he, he, I don't know. I think he,

he didn't like the way his nipples look when he first came out the shirt. I'm being honest. I think that didn't like the way his nipples looked when he first came out of the shirt. I'm being honest. I think that's a funny thing to think about. They look a little too puffy or something. He didn't like the way they looked. That's funny. Some people don't like puffy nipples, man. So you can pull one of them and yank on them and shit.

Yeah, man. Nipples on guys are weird things anyway. I know. It's really puffy. It looks even worse. Yeah. Well, some dudes have big areolas. Yeah. They're real embarrassed. They don't want to take their shirt off. They don. Yeah. Well, some dudes have like big areolas. Yeah.

And they're real embarrassed. They don't want to take their shirt off. You don't want to take your shirt off with a big areola. Well, girl, it doesn't matter at all. But a guy with a big areola is like, whoa, what's happening here, man? That's weird, isn't it? What's going on there? The titties just hanging out like that.

Weird. It's pornographic. It's pornographic. That's what it is. For dudes, when they get fat, that's a bummer, man. When they develop man tits. Oh, my gosh. I know. That's a bummer. And when they don'tits oh my gosh i know that's a bummer and when they don't care they can slap you with them and stuff like that too that's terrible that's terrible that's terrible oh my gosh i'm

just glad i didn't have nothing like that i i did get big big to have some some boobie weight but not not that dang big what do you do most of the time now? Like what is your days? What do you occupy your days with? I know you're doing a lot of analyst work. Yeah, so I still do analyst work, but I also try to do as much as I can with Onyx, and I still do my training and things like that. But I also work with CBS a little bit, you know, doing analyst stuff for them.

But, you know, I'm still in that space just trying to figure out that next thing that I align with, you know. And that's why I'm so excited to work with Unlimited Sciences, you know, and doing something I'm passionate about because I'm passionate about psychedelics. You know, that's what I really, I really like that. And I think that that can help people, you know, now I'm to the point where I just want to help people, you know, that's where I'm at in my life. I feel as if like, you know, I lived a lot of my life for myself at this point, you know, and I've accomplished some great things, but now I'm to the point where I just want to be able to help other people achieve what they want to in life and just be

a part of that. You know, that's what really resonates in me more than anything right now. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I mean, it's real, man. I know it's real. That's why it's beautiful. I'm glad we talked, man, because I had a feeling it was going to go like this. Yeah, I am too, man. I had a good time, man. It's definitely something. I've watched you for a long time on your show. And honestly speaking, when I first started to awaken and wanted to understand a lot about these entheogens, I would listen to Joe Rogan. you know I would listen to Joe Rogan and I would listen to your podcast and just you know

the amount of information you shared and you know the people the guests that you had on you you know you always have a great people who speak with some knowledge that I can't even comprehend sometimes you know and that's what it's about you know you feel like when I watch this show it's such a good tool to learn you know

and thank you for that my pleasure brother thank you for being here man I really enjoyed it it was awesome thank you oh if people pleasure brother Thank you for being here man I really enjoyed it That was awesome Thank you If people want to get a hold of you Social media Give us your social media

Your Instagram, Twitter Yeah you can check me out At Sugar Rashad Evans At Instagram And if anybody wants to be involved In that study It's UnlimitedSciences.org And you know they can go in And sign up and everything will be, you know, it's HIPAA protected so that no one's information will get out.

And, you know, after they send an email, the information will be destroyed. Okay. So that's about it. Beautiful. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you being here, man. It was awesome. Rashad Evans, ladies and gentlemen.

Bye. Thank you brother I appreciate you being here man It was awesome Rashad Evans ladies and gentlemen Bye