This Past Weekend - E305 Michael Chandler

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Michael Chandler is a three-time Bellator Lightweight World Champion who just signed his first UFC contract. They discuss the current state of the UFC, what it's like rising the ranks as a professional fighter and his recent signing with Dana White and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.     New Merch https://theovonstore.com -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   This episode is brought to you by:   Magic Mind https://magicmind.co and use promo code THEO for 10% off   The Zebra https://thezebra.com/theo   Tushy https://hellotushy.com/theo for 10% off   Bridge Credit Solutions https://bridgecreditsolutions.com/theo   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Music: “Shine” - Bishop Gunn http://bit.ly/Shine_BishopGunn   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Hit the Hotline [phone]   Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: http://bit.ly/TPW_VideoHotline   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Find Theo   Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEKV_MOhwZ7OEcgFyLKilw   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Producer Nick https://instagram.com/realnickdavis   Associate Producer: Sean Dugan https://www.instagram.com/seandugan/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's episode is brought to you by Magic Mind and if you ever wanted to really get the most out of your mind then this will help you do it. This is something that really will just put you right into that flow state instead of just shifting gears all day. Quit living manually. Do it automatic. MagicMind.co. It's basically the organic version of five-hour energy but it's not trash like that stuff is. It's positive stuff. You can check it out MagicMind.co. Use promo code Theo for 10% off. Today's guest is a mixed martial artist. He's a three-time Bellator lightweight world champion. He's a fitness and training entrepreneur as well I think it's safe to say and he just signed his contract

for the UFC entering an insane lightweight division. Happy to have him here today Mr. Michael Chandler. What are you taking right now? This is just my vitamins. I freaking completely forgot all the way because there's a lot of rumors about you out there. What are you taking right now? I just want to know exactly. It was fish oil. It's fish oil, turmeric, beta alanine, magnesium, BCAAs. And do you take that once a day? Twice a day. There's the formula at night. There's like one or two other things that help me sleep I think. That's about it. Okay. I'll send you my supplement list actually. Will you? I do. I just did it for my buddy yesterday. I need a little bit of rest. I don't know if I could take your supplement list man. No it's dude. It's all just like the

little micronutrients that you're probably not getting from your food and that's it. And then for me, for you, for all of us, like just anti-inflammatory antioxidants, that's the most important thing. Did you see a blood specialist or how did you start to get on this regimen? I did. I did a couple years ago just to look at all my stuff, like where I was at, hormone levels and all that kind of stuff. Because that's the idea. Like how do you legally keep your body in tip-top shape? Good diet and rest are like the two most important things, but then it's supplementation, making sure you're taking care of your body after every single workout. Like BCAA's protein, those are the two things that I would die on a freaking mountain for. Those are

the two things that I've been taking over the last 10 years that have always kept me feeling good. So you take them right post-workout, obviously, protein and then you do the BCAA's. Yeah. I mean, pretty much I have a blender bottle with me three times a day. Like in the morning, I get up and I, oh creatine. So I do creatine for the brain. Oh yeah. But I do creatine when I would bus boy actually, when I'd bus tables. Well, that's the thing. Like I kind of steered away from it because I thought, I thought creatine was just like, you know, the freaking dudes who just wanted the big biceps and they freaking lift weights in high school. Inno explode. It was inno explode and freaking creatine. Oh dude,

that inno explode was crazy. That's all it was back in the day. We didn't even read the whole label. We just thought it said knocks on it. Nobody knew what the heck it was. Like it was just like some kid at our school with two things of it. They call the police on it. Exactly, where they're trying to, he was trying to sell it. He's just spooning it out to people. Here, put this in your mouth and you're some dumb kids out there before his test, getting two bits of it. You just got an awake idiot. I'm pretty sure I got an A, man. Pretty sure I got an A. Pretty sure I got an A. You got a D, Kevin. Kevin always got a D, man. You got a D minus, man. Kevin always got a D. Kevin was that kid who would sit in class and he would have the hoodie and he

would close it completely and then sit there the entire class. Just draw both strings down and just have it completely shut. I'm cool, Ms. Davis. Leave me alone, man. Had a rough night. So what else? So your regimen is sleep. What is it? Because when I watch you, man, like, you know, when I watch your fights, it's like, Jesus Christ. Even as a viewer, I'm like, will this guy stop for a second so I can, like, it's too many frames per minute. It's like, how can I visually catch up to what's going on here? Dude, I mean, that to me is just, that's God's gifts, man. Like, some people, because you know what it is, it's, I'm not afraid to freaking lose and I'm not afraid to, I'm not afraid to not like, it becomes cliche. I'm not, I'm really not afraid

to die in there and I'm really not afraid to get tired either. Trust me, I've been tired. I've passed out. I passed outside of it. Get tired. Yeah, I passed out inside of a fight once from just exhaustion, woke up before the fifth round. Coach carried me to the stool, woke up on the stool and then fought the fifth round. So once you've been there, you're just like, well, it's really nothing that's going to stop me, you know, and I think it's just, it's wrestling, like in wrestling, it was seven hard minutes in their face, push them out of bounds, take them down, do whatever you got to do, like to win the match, like shoot more times than he does, go harder than he does, foot on the gas, all gas, no breaks, like didn't just go. So I think that

wrestling mindset is just like, now it doesn't work as well in fighting because it's 15 minutes, it's 25 minutes. You got to be a little more, you got to negotiate those spaces a little bit more and not go so hard all the time or else you will die. Yeah. Do you, is it a psychological thing for you in that first round? Because I mean, you come out in some first rounds like, dude, I would even, you know, if they let me wear a ton of padding, I might go against you in like a ninth round, but a first round would be somebody wanting to die, it seems like. Yeah. Do you come out there with a different psychology in the first round, kind of like, or is that part of your mindset, like I'm put everything is right here? Yeah, because I think some people, some people are

slow starters and case in point, like I think Khabib, Khabib finished Justin Gaichi the way that he did because I think Justin Gaichi wasn't ready for Khabib to come out with him, him come out the way they did come out that hot. So you can usually just, you can get guys flustered, you get, get guys nervous, get guys scared. They immediately become a defensive fighter right away. And that's why the only fights I've lost are the ones that people ran away from me, you know, and I lose a split decision, you know, like that's literally the only pretty much the way that I've lost. You know, when you were watching that could be even Gaichi, what were you, what did you think after that first round? Because I felt like Gaichi got a lot of time on

his feet against him. A lot of it got a lot of guys don't get that it seemed like do not get as much time against Khabib on their feet. Yeah, no, I think I think that's that I think that was the most surprising thing is, is we thought the striking was going to lean towards Gaichi's favor, yet could be I think the manner in which could be fights is just hectic, crazy, fast pace. It's not that skilled. If you go back and watch the fight, there really wasn't a ton of strikes that were landed. They landed on Justin's hands, they landed on Justin's elbows, forearms, like it wasn't like he hurt Gaichi numerous times. He just got I think he just got Gaichi scared. And I hate using the word scared because I don't like to talk about the guys in my division, right?

And obviously, Justin's not a guy who gets scared, but I know what you're saying that that that energy in the beginning, or it's even like, who was I just talking to? Oh, well, I was talking to Brennan about it, I think, like, it's almost like, if you get thrown into a scenario where you're not, you're just not ready, you can make bad decisions, you know, and I think Justin Gaichi also just was making bad decisions on the ground. So I don't think necessarily think Justin Gaichi is that bad on the ground. I think he just got there and he was just like, what do I do? This guy's nuts. You know, this guy's a freaking mauler. Yeah, he's like a rare snake kind of. Exactly. They're like, why haven't scientists found this dude yet? You know, it's

kind of like, it's almost like you would see him more on one of those like David Attenborough kind of like, you know, the Russian Anaconda. Then you would like, it seems like he hasn't been discovered. It's like, well, somebody test this dude for reptilianism. Yeah, or like, or like 3000 miles below the sea level, down there at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. He's running on some old water for sure. When you're watching that fight, did you think at all, and I'm a novice fight watcher, you know, I'm new into like just even absorbing a lot of what you guys, his world is like, and it's, and the biggest reason is just because it's something that's so scared being my whole life, like any like physical altercation, like never learned how to defend myself, never

learned any of that growing up, nobody even in my ear like, Hey, just at least stand there and get hit, you know, none of that. So I definitely come from a place of fascination. Did you think when you were watching the could be even get you that that could be kind of let the first round happen? Do you feel like he could have finished it earlier? Or do you feel like it just that the way it played out was the way it played out? I think the way it played out was the way it played out, because I think I mean, I think Habib just was going and going and just turned it into a fight real quick, fast paces. And I loved it. He just fought with reckless abandon. And this is a guy who's undefeated. Most of the time you see guys who are undefeated protect that record by fighting

a little bit more, you know, a little bit more timid or a little bit more diplomatic, a little bit smarter, you know, if you will, but he just went he went in there and wanted to get into a fist fight with with, you know, the craziest striker in the division. It kind of goes back a little bit to what you were just saying about the not not being afraid to be exhausted, you know, not being because I've never thought about it like that. Like I go into any sort of physical if I'm at the gym or if I'm training or something like, yeah, I'm thinking, OK, in a little bit, I'm going to be exhausted out that fear is a real like a living fear that's in me. I think I think that's one of the greatest fears of of anybody across all walks of life when it comes to athletics.

Like nobody likes to get tired, you know, people are afraid of getting hurt, people are afraid of of losing. But man, getting tired is the worst thing in the world. Now also getting tired on the football field means you got caught, you know, means you're running down, you got 80 yards and you're running and you get caught by the D back who's just faster than you because you slowed down. That's not that big of a deal. But you get you get tired and locked into a cage with another man with four ounce gloves. Like that's a scary spot to be in because when when when the lactic acid builds up and the heart rate is through the roof and you can't feel your arms and legs and then you got a man coming at you trying to knock your head off. That's a scary place to be and

that's a place where nobody wants to be. So you know that you know that scenario is always right there. It's only a couple a couple crazy moves away or a couple scrambles or getting hurt and get your heart rate up. Like it's always there. So you just have to it's like the movie 300 where he always talks about fear is always a constant when he's when he's talking to his young son at the very beginning of the movie. Fear is always a constant, but accepting it, that's where we win the battle. Accepting the fact that you're always going to the fear is always going to be there and then push him through it. That's where the rub is. That's where the champions go. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, because I just accepted it in the beginning. I was like, oh,

I'm just afraid as fuck when I was young. I just never unaccepted it. You know, I got us never. But yeah, that's interesting. Man, I was watching that fight last night with you and Eddie Alvarez. Man, what a fight. Can you go back and watch that sort of thing? Like because I noticed at the end, it's almost like a, you know, you were winning the fight. I think it was four rounds to maybe, you know, I mean, maybe three one or something in the final round. And but it's still been such an amazing battle. Like in that last couple of minutes, are you do you start to get into a defensive mindset? Like, okay, I have this, I probably have this win in the bag. Like when do you kind of apply like strategic breaks? You know what I'm saying?

Like, yeah, like, you know, de de accelerate, but knowing that you already probably have the win if you can get to the finish line. I never do. And that's not a smart thing to do. You know, if you're a young fighter, listen to this right now, like, it's it's made me a great living. It's got me a lot of fans because I just I'm all gas, no breaks, but it's also bit me in the behind numerous times, you know, and even, you know, as we talk about like, I passed out at the end of the fourth round of my first Benson Henderson fight, and then lost the fifth round, I won the first four lost the fifth round. Oh, yeah, that's right, huh? Just because I just kept going. And it wasn't because I lost the fifth round, because I took my foot off the gas. I just, I fought so hard the

first four rounds that I didn't have anything left in the tank. And I freaking peed blood afterwards and had rhabdomyolysis and all kinds of crazy stuff. And what do you do, though? So when you're heading into that type of a round, like when you're heading into that type of that was you end up in those rounds, man, you end up in those. I mean, yeah, the first fight against Benson that round that that fight was insane. I mean, you know, he took a lot of hits in that in that whole fight. I mean, that thing was crazy. The suplex. I'm like, what? I don't even know. We had like Roman times. I was going on, right? It was intense, right? Yeah. But yeah, when you're going into that type of a round. What do you do? Man, so that was when you know that you've run out

of a lot of gas of your natural gas. Yeah, that was uncharted territory. You know, I never would have thought I would lose consciousness inside the fight. Thank God it happened right at the end of the bell rang. And I'm just sitting there on my knees. And I'm not thinking about anything because I'm not even kind of stumbled, right? And they're like, that's what the announcer said. I'm not even conscious, man. Like I was and then I sat down on the on the on the stool, one one coaches in front of me and then this coach behind me yells something. And that's when I like did this. And then I asked my coach in front of me, did I get, did I just get knocked out? Did I get choked out? He's like, no, man, this is my Dutch kickboxing coach, Henry Hooft. He's

no, man. What are you talking about, man? We're going to the fifth round, man. You're doing good. You're going to win this fight. Yeah, you're in spelling class. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, for sure. And I, and I remember I couldn't, I couldn't lift my arms because I don't think the blood quite got to my, because remember, I was, you said I was stumbling because my feet weren't working and my arms weren't working. So I couldn't lift my hands up to protect myself for that fifth round. But that's just uncharted territory. But it's also that, that primal animal instinct that you just have inside you where it's like, at that point, you're a, you're a possum backed up into a corner. And no matter what, you just got to fight. You either just curl your table, curl your tail,

curl your tail between your legs and die. But how do you, how do you, how do you adjust your strategy at that point? Well, at that point, the strategy was, the strategy was somewhat survive, you know, and, and, and that's why, that's why I would say, if I had more in the tank, I would have just went forward with reckless abandon. But at some point you're like, okay, well, I need to take a little bit of step back, try to breathe a little bit, you know, because I got into the point of no return. There's a difference between being afraid to get to the point of no return. So all the way leading up to it, you, you're only fighting at 50%, 60%, 70%. But if you fight at 100%, get to the point of no return after that, your 100% is like 40%, 50%. And you're fighting at 50%, not being 100%

you know, offensive or, or, or, or kind of trying to come forward. But essentially, you're just, you're in survival mode. And then once you get your wits back about your a little bit of gas, a little bit of blood back to your brain, then you can start throwing offense again, which is that's kind of what I did in that round, even though I essentially just got into a grappling match with them and, you know, lost the fifth round pretty bad, got a big old cut, you know, but let's go to we got a question right here. Riley, can you hear everybody okay? You can. Okay, great. Hello, hello. Chase Malden out of Virginia. For Mr. Chandler, if you saw that Anderson Silva fight this weekend, what are your thoughts on it? And do you think he should retire because I think

most of us do? What do you think about just, you know, guys kind of out of their prime trying to fight anyway? Good question. Good question. A lot of good questions came in for you, man. You know, Anderson Silva is, you know, one of the greatest of all time. But when you watch his last couple of fights, it's hard to remember the Anderson Silva, the greatest of all time. I think that's why I think what GSP did so well is he was like, I'm done, you know, I did my thing, crushed it, I made my money. I got a I left a good taste in people's mouths of a who I am as a man, as a competitor, what I accomplished. And I'm going to be out the Barry Sanders, if you will, you know, it's always good to retire before people think you should, because the fans always want

more out of you. You know, selfishly, the fans, all of his fans in Brazil, they want more out of Anderson Silva, keep going, keep going, keep going. But before you know it, you know, you lose, you know, in devastating fashion again, or you lose that bad again, and then people can kind of forget. So I would like to see him hang it up. Even though, you know, it sounds like he's going to, but I, I would have said this two, three fights ago as well. Man, he's a he's a icon in Brazil, you know, he's a worldwide, you know, superstar when it comes to mixed martial arts. He's, I never want to talk about someone's money or what is enough money or what is enough legacy or whatever. But I feel like he should have enough legacy, should have enough money, should have

enough happiness, should have enough of what he's built to be able to sail off in the sunset. So then what do you think it is that brings someone back at that moment? Like what is it, like if you had to get inside of, of his mindset, knowing what it's like to be a fighter? Yeah, well, and I think that's the difference. And I don't want to bring other people up, but I think there's definitely been guys that you're like, okay, that guy's only fighting because he blew a bunch of money, he needs some money, he needs to come, he needs to make a paycheck. Oh, if I was in Brazil, dude, with the drugs and women, I'd have blown it all. Back into the ring on one foot. Dude, well, that, well, and that's, that's the thing, but I don't

think I, I, you're not saying that about him. No, I think Anderson Silva is the guy who just, I bet he's, I bet he's set for life. I could be wrong. You know, like I said, I don't know the guy personally, but there's a lot of guys who you say that guy right there. I know why he's stepping in the cage tonight. He needs another paycheck. He needs to, you know, like Nick Diaz, you mean? Well, yeah, I just made that up also. No, I mean, I don't know. I wonder, I don't know how those Diaz brothers are doing. I bet they're doing all right, but I mean, I know Nate, Nate Diaz did all right when that, that Connor fight made a couple million, but you know, it's, it's, it's tough because I'm going to get to that point eventually, you know, where people are like, dang,

it's time to hang it up, you know, but I'm in my mind and my camp with my coaches, it's something you always have to go back to your family and your coaches, because you're never going to want to quit. You know, you're never going to want to stop unless that's what I'm getting at. You're never going to want to quit. No, even though like a guy like GSP, I mean, there's, there's him on the on record saying he hated fighting. Like he, he hated, he would show up to the arena and pray to God that the, that a comet would come down and hit the arena and they just end his misery. That freaking that someone would pull the fire alarm that there would be a bomb threat, that there would be something where he would just be like, thank God, I could go home and don't have to do

this. You know, he, he talked about in, in and documented kind of like the anxiety that the guy went through. And this is one of the greatest of all time, a guy who looked unbeatable at times, you know, still does still. Yeah. I mean, still, I think he could come into the cage right now and at 155, 170 and win the freaking title, 185 possibly, you know, so you never know what's motivating a guy, but you got to go back to your coaches, you know, your, your closest of kin, your mentors, your family, and then the people around you that, that know, no matter how much, how much more that you accomplish, how much more money you make, they don't benefit from it. They just want to see you happy. You know, those are the people that's, those, those are the people

you got to listen to, you know. It's interesting because even in every, in every form of entertainment or survival, anything, I guess, maybe, I mean, I can relate it a little bit in my own life, but yeah, there's these voices that push you to succeed and like, even these invisible voices of people that naysayers, you know, haters that say you can't, you know, but then at a certain point, those voices aren't really helping you anymore. It's more the voices that actually can see you as a human and saying like, okay, you know, we care about you. There's no, you've proven yourself. You know, what do you do? Now, how do you manage that? Because there's a, there's a, there's a lot of mismanagement, mismanagement at that point as well. And sometimes you're so blind,

you just come up so blindly, like just throwing fists, especially in you guys' career, you know. And I see what Poirier in a lot of his fights, in his old fights, you can see, he didn't even have a look in his eyes. He's just like a, you know, an animal. You have that animal instinct. But then you get to a point where you're standing on top of the cage and you're like, okay, I'm not in this, I'm not fighting for nothing anymore. Like I'm at a point where I can make some choices for myself. Well, yeah. I mean, a lot of it comes with maturity and stuff too. And, and I told you, it was cool. Like right around the time that we met, you know, I was getting ready to go fight. And that was the first time I ever met Poirier, because Poirier was cornering a guy

who was on the same card. And I just went straight up. We're in Connecticut. It was in Connecticut. Oh, Saba, Saba, something. Yeah, he just, he got a couple of wins in a row. Yeah. You know, he's good. And Poirier was there over the whole fight week, corner him and whatnot. And I just went straight up to him. Because I knew at this point, I was probably going to go, I was probably going to leave Bellator. And I was probably going to hopefully sign with the UFC. And my goal was I wanted to sign with the UFC. So I knew I was about to walk up to a guy that I was probably going to, I'm going to be a same division for sure. I'm probably going to end up fighting him. But to me, the respect level for a guy like Poirier or even anybody in the division, I don't,

I respect you. If you step inside the cage, you make your living doing what I do, doing what we do. Because this is what was, I understand the perils, the trials, the tribulations of this, this tough sport that we call our profession, but went up to him and we were talking a little bit. And I just, you know, I congratulated on his last win. He had just beaten Dan Hooker a couple weeks prior, congratulated him on the fight of the year candidate that it was. It was a phenomenal fight, his heart, his determination, what he does outside the cage, the man that he is, the competitor that he is, the father that he is. And then also we kind of talked like about the journey a little bit where it's like, man, 30 something years old now, got a wife, got a kid, got it,

you know, doing what we're doing is much different than back in the day. I kind of brought up how he was some young shaved head punk kid on that documentary. You saw his documentary along, and that was Dustin Poirier from back in the day. And he was in this documentary. Yeah, he was just like this craze, this insane thing coming out of the swamp. Exactly. And it, but it's so cool to see where people start and then where people end up and watch, and watch people's maturation throughout the journey. And, and he, he would probably, if he was sitting here today, he would probably say, man, you know, his, his career, I think, is a blueprint for a guy who, who started at a certain point has ended up where he's at.

He's at the top of the game, top of the division, top of the toughest division in the, in the entire world about to fight the biggest global superstar of, of mixed martial arts and Conor McGregor. He's in a phenomenal spot, but you don't just fall there by accident. You fall to the top of the mountain by just by coincidence. You know, he had to build and climb and plod and, and tread towards that. And a lot of it comes with good things happen to good people, you know, and it's not, though, it's not that people don't do the right things is that people don't do the right things for long enough. And he has put his time in growing into a phenomenal man, father, husband, and he's going to be rewarded. He's a good role model. So it's cool just to see in the maturation

process of, of, of us as fighters, you know, a decade later. Yeah, it's wild. And it's also, it's interesting to see because, you know, growing up, like a lot of kids in my neighborhood fight a lot of like, you know, it was a lot of like, you know, a lot of poor kids kind of fight, you know, it's just something to do. You don't have cable, you fucking throw two fucking, you know, 48 pounders in a ditch and let them go at it. You know what I'm saying? Like just different dude, I used to invite friends over, like kind of rich friends. And then we were going to bike ride the neighborhood and I knew some kids were going to fucking fight him. And you were going to be in the fight. I was Don King out there, staying on the side of this. My buddy's like,

I thought we're just going to rent movies. I'm like, well, dude, you got to deal with fucking little Thomas Hoover first, son, you know, just to waste 47 pounds. But he's scrappy. Dude, that's funny. That's a true story. That's a true story, bro. One of my friends still gets mad at me about it, man. But yeah, I used to invite some of the rich friends. One of the rich friends, you guys are still friends. I'm like, you'll be fine. He's got a really nice freaking Harrow with pegs on it and stuff. And you get the kid, the kid comes out with a freaking busted up Mongoose like, Hey, what's up? Oh, definitely. Hey, what's up, Tommy Hoover? Yeah, Tommy Hoover comes out, dude. He's got that natural shake in him, bro.

Just the Lord's Scoliosis, bro. He's missing a couple of elements, you know. But yeah, I used to do that shit. But so it's interesting to get to a point. It seems it seems interesting from an outsider's perspective to get to a point where, yeah, to come from a place of fighting for your peace of mind or for your comfort or to feel okay, you know, like I do stand up comedy to feel okay, I get on the stage, I need something from people, you know, fighters, they, there's some, we're all trying to prove something to ourselves or to others. But to come from a place of fighting, because that's such a physical and brute thing to then get to a place of having some sort of peace in your life where, wherever those voices are that probably made you so angry

in the first place, that's a wild ride you guys are on. Yeah. And it's, and it's funny too, as the sport has evolved and even, even in the very beginning of the sport, you know, the sport started with, you know, Dana White and these guys, they didn't even start the UFC. It was, it was started by a different group and then the UFC and the Fertitas, Dana White bought it and turned it into what it is today. But I'm sure there was guys who fought just for, there was no money in it either. So it wasn't like they were trying to make a bunch of money. It was really who was the toughest, who's the baddest dude on the planet from what vocation, from what background? You got your boxer, there was a boxer wearing one boxing glove where he could throw a jab,

but he could also grapple, had your karate guys, your sumo wrestling guys, your street fighters, your whatever. Backflip or some guys get in there and do a backflip and then get their ass kicked. Yeah, exactly. You know, see, that's how it kind of started. And then, and then, and then it evolved into the sport of, okay, we can make a living out of this, or, or it's just a really cool hobby. So you saw guys who kind of came from a place of anger, but then you see a guy like myself, I just like hand-to-hand combat and I, and I don't, I don't really like confrontation. The funny thing is I'm very similar to you. Like if someone walked in right now and wanted to fight, I'd get this weird nervous tension and I'm like, I'm not trying to fight, man. I'm not here to fight. But

you put me inside the cage with you and you, and you put a check on the line and it's a competition and I can prove myself in a, in a, in a contest of hand-to-hand combat. That's when the real competitor comes out of me because I love the contest, but I don't like the conflict, you know? So somewhere in between there is, is where you. So some of your drive comes from the competition aspect of it? No, all of it does, I think. I mean, at this point, I realize that all of my, all of my admirers, fans or people who, who follow me on my platforms or want to, want to say, man, that guy's a guy that I want my kid to be like. They don't do it because I can kick people's ass. Like they don't

care about that. They do it because they say, man, that guy is a, is a symbol and a, a manifestation of a little guy from a little town who was taught to do little things who had a bunch of ups, a couple downs, never quit, pulled himself up by his bootstraps, dusted himself off every time he got knocked down and became a champion because of it. Now is in the best position of his career here because of, of his sticktutiveness and his continued and drive to move forward. And yeah, it's really cool that he, you know, it's a bonus that he likes to bite down on his mouthpiece and get into a brawl inside of a cage, inside of an octagon. But really we like him for the symbol of what he is, the metaphor for what his, his career stands for. And I think that's what,

that's what I like because to me, fighting is so much deeper than just the 15 minutes inside the cage, the 25 minutes inside the cage. It's how you live your life, the honor, the respect, the integrity and the, the character that you can build because someday I'm going to be retired. I'm going to look back and say, man, that was a really fun ride. It was painful at times, but man, I impacted a lot of people throughout it and we had a really good time and made some, made some, some coin to be able to take care of my family. Yeah, it's funny and I hate to keep bringing up Dustin, but we're Dustin Poirier fans here and I'm a Dustin Poirier fan. I'm going to fight him someday, you know, it's going to happen. Oh, it'd be a great fight. But that's the thing. Like,

it'd be a great fight. You don't have to hate each other, right? So it's, yeah, 100%. It's, and it seemed like there's a lot of respect, especially in that division, man. There's, I mean, there's some, God, that's insane. It's just bumper to bumper traffic in that division. But yeah, I remember like about a year ago, there was just kind of this thing where you got to start to see who Dustin was as a person through his fighting. And it was even after the Khabib loss, but I mean, he was bummed out. I remember talking, we talked a little bit and I said, but man, you don't understand, like people are seeing you, you're becoming like a hero to people, like you're becoming winner, loot, and it doesn't matter anymore. Not that that this is just my

mindset. I mean, obviously he wants to win every time, but I'm like, you're becoming, people can see who you are through your art. And that's one thing that that's what's really amazing. I think about having the ability to be in some sort of performance, whether it's fighting, stand up, anything, if you can, or anything, I mean, if you're just, even if you're just somebody that's going, you know, picking up garbage, if you can, if people could see your heart through, through whatever you're doing, man, that's pretty powerful. Dude, that's, that's what it is. Because and that's, and that's why we have to be careful as a, as a human race, as a society to be separated from one another, six foot distance, wearing masks, like I don't want to turn it into a,

the political thing or the, or the, you know, the pandemic thing or any of that kind of stuff. But it's like, I believe God created us for relationships and not just personal one-on-one relationships, but even the, the relationship that Dustin Poirier's fans have with him by watching him via social media, by watching him in his fights. And truth be told, people would care less about him if he was undefeated. People would care less about him if he was perfect. People love the fact that he gets beaten up, battered, bruised, and then, and then picks himself back up, gets back on the mic and says, you know what, I'm not perfect. I'm not, I'm not undefeated. I have blemishes on my record. Look at me, you know, when you mess up, raise your hand and say, Hey, this is me,

this is, this is my baggage, this is my loss, but this is my loss to deal with. And you can, and you will say things about me and you will criticize and you will nitpick. But trust me, this is, I may have lost the, the battle tonight, but the war will be won down the line. And that's, and that's what is the beauty of mixed martial arts. I have five losses on my record, but people don't care about my losses whenever I win my next fight, or even if I lose my next fight, they don't care. They just, the best fighters in the, in the entire, on the entire planet right now are the ones with multiple losses, the biggest superstores. Your George Mazvidal has like 10, 11 losses, you know, like Diaz has, Diaz has nothing more losses than wins, man.

Conner's got almost five losses now. You know, it could be phenomenal what he has done. John Jones, phenomenal what they have done, but it's also the ups and the downs, the ebbs and the flows, the losses and the wins that, that really draw people to these fighters. Yeah. And the different types of fighters. Yeah. It's like some people are like, yeah, they just want the undefeated, but I think more people can relate to a guy that has, like a, you know, has the ups and downs. It's like, even like Anthony Smith is one of my favorites, you know, and it's not, I could care less if he wins or loses. It's like every time he comes out of that tunnel, it makes me feel like, damn, bro, whatever's going on in my life, I can,

oh, it's going to be fine. You know, this guy can do, if this guy can come back, you know, I can keep, it just reminds me that I can keep going. And that's so cool. Like even, even you just saying that, like I even, it gives me a different perspective, knowing you and then, and, and him, like I don't, I don't know him and I don't watch a ton of his fights either. Like it's, but it's just funny how certain people gravitate towards or are drawn to certain fighters. And I think that's what's so beautiful about mixed martial arts. And obviously I'm biased because I'm in it, but it's, it's so much easier to look at a guy like Anthony Smith or even any, any of us fighters compared to like, say a baseball player who,

you know, he chances are the only thing, the only thing that you see inside of his performance is, okay, can he catch the ball? Can he run the bases? Can he hit the ball? We, we get the luxury of being inside of a cage fighting. And there's second to second to second in each second that happens inside each of those five minute rounds is up very, very high, very, very low, somewhere in the middle craziness going on uncertainty. And it's, it's just a beautiful sport. It's a really, really beautiful sport. And man, it's just really cool to be a part of it. I would argue, like wrestling is the same, same way amateur wrestling, college wrestling. I love it because it's it built me into the man that I am. But, but mixed martial arts on a global platform is just,

it's such a beautiful sport. Because even the guy like you who, you know, Anthony Smith, he's watching them. And it's just like, like we said, he's, he's in there painting a masterpiece of the physical manifestation of the ups, the downs, the, the, your, your greatest opportunities and your darkest hour that you personally feel when you watch him fight. And maybe he knows you, maybe he doesn't. Like obviously you're a celebrity, but like the average person, the average person who's like Anthony, Anthony Smith is my favorite fighter who Anthony may never, ever meet, but he made that person sitting on his couch in Bikipsi, Mississippi, watching the UFC paper, you feel something. It's really freaking cool, man. Pretty crazy.

It's powerful. And you guys, I mean, you guys sport is unlike any other because there's so many moments where it's like, okay, how does this, how does he approach the beginning of the fight? What is this? What is his behavior been like going up to the fight? How does he, how is he managing himself in this beginning, like in this kind of cap aware, kind of beginning dance, feeling each other out, when or lose, how did they then behave? You know, it's like, there's so many moments for people to show every side of humanity. It's, it's almost, it's, yeah, I think that's why I think there's so many new fans coming to it too. It's like, wow, it's not just about the fighting. There's, there's just so much more to it. Yeah. It's like kind of

what you said too. Like it's almost, it's almost like, of course, the fight is the most entertaining part, but man, think about the walkout, think about the, you know, the shaking the hands and the hugging of your, your teammates and your coaches before you go into battle. It's literally like Roman times where they were back in the back and they were shaking their hands, you know, like you see Gladiator with the strength and honor thing before they went out there. And like, it's don't not to sound cheesy, but that's a lot different than so many other sports. This is so much more raw and real. And it's, and, and, and Ronda Rousey said it back in the day on this, this documentary, it's on Netflix called the hurt business that I was in. It was pretty

really cool documentary about fighting. And she said, you, whether you love it or you hate it, you're drawn to it. People are drawn to it because even if we're the most peaceful person in the world, we are somewhat at some level drawn to, to conflict or we're drawn to sport, we're drawn to competition, we're drawn to the contest and, and mixed martial arts is all of that rolled into one. And like you said, there's so many different aspects of the fight that are, that are outside of just the fight, the buildup. And then afterwards, whether or not me and you hated say, you know, we sold it on TV that we hated each other or it was real that we hated each other. Are we going to shake hands afterwards? Are we going to, are we going to hug afterwards?

Are we going to shed tears afterwards? Like what's going to happen? You knock me out, do I swallow my pride and say hi to you know, say congratulations or vice versa, or there's any one million different scenarios that could manifest themselves and happen inside the cage. And it's, it's the most unpredictable sport in the world, like being tied on tour tornado every single time. And that's why people love it. And that's why I love it. Look, you want to know about money, then you got to know about this, that Americans are overpaying on car insurance by $21 billion, $21 billion. That's a lot. But searching for a better deal to find out how much you are actually overpaying, it can be real trying, but not anymore.

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Visit bridgecreditsolutions.com. They're very personable. They take communication seriously. You can always feel free to call or text no matter the hour, day or night. That's right. Visit bridgecreditsolutions.com. They are helping me. They really are, and they can help you. Let's go to a question right here. We got a question from a beautiful young man right here who's been smoking. Question for Michael Frickin Chandler. Hey, man. First off, congrats on the UFC contract. Congrats on making it to Fight Island. Getting to hang out there, making the cut like a professional like you always have been. I got to know them. I can tell you, your guy likes to stay in shape. You're very disciplined, but what's your cheat? Like say you go out Friday night or whatever.

What's your cheat meal? Or like just cheat activity? What do you like to do whenever you give yourself a day off to just unwind? I got to know gang gang. Good luck, buddy. Yeah, you ever pull off the side of interstate and have fucking five or six Doritos? I can see you having five or six Doritos. Two cool ranch Doritos, individual triangles in your freaking glove box. Just two. Only two. No, man. Like, you know, the most, and I love this question because I think I am one of the guys that people look at and they're just like, man, that dude lives it. And I do, but you also have to realize that you're a human being and not a robot. You know, I'm not a cyborg sent back in time to freaking, you know, fight in a cage. Like, I'm right then. Yeah, take that. No, but, uh, you know, just a

normal person. So like right now, you know, you're catching me in between. Like I just got done making weight. What was it? Pretty much like 14 days ago. Yeah, it was exactly 14 days ago. So for the last two weeks, I've gotten, I've gotten workouts in five, six workouts. So like a workout on average every other day, just to give myself a some time to heal and be some time to almost feel lazy, almost feel like a shrub. Like, you know, like you eat a little bit of crap, you drink some alcoholic beverages, be like, I love taking my wife out, eating some good food, having some drinks, open up a bottle of wine, but I don't feel great afterwards. And it reminds me why I go into a 12 week training camp where there's no alcohol, there's no bad food. I'm eating out of Tupperware

containers or, or my mega fit meals, which is a food prep company that I, that I use. And it's all just chicken, lean ground beef, salmon, turkey, lamb. What about a lamb maybe? No, not, not in there, but I do, I do like lamb. Lam's not bad. My wife makes some good lamb. And then I just couple that with like three or four vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprout, sweet potato. And that's literally all I eat for 12 weeks straight. So you could shit in a garden and help it out. Pretty much, you know, like a human, human compost. And so, so to answer his question, I love pizza. I like a thin crust pizza because man, too much bread gets me. I'm not a Chicago deep dish type of guy. I'm actually like a St. Louis style thin crust pizza guy. True food here

in town to be eating true food. Yeah, I've been over there. True food pizza, divorces in there too, looking for that next man. Exactly. You know, you go in there, somebody ordered me. I was like, I'm not even on there. Hey, I'm right there. Good luck. I'm on with the mullet. I'll take him with a side of Chardonnay. And so true food pizza is actually like one of my favorite pizzas. But and then, man, yeah. So you cheat some. So also getting yourself probably to feel a little bit like it gives you a place to come back from and also rewarding your body probably from what you went through. I mean, that's very kind of Native American of you in a lot of ways is just for sure rewarding your body, knowing that it's doing things for you. It does. And of course,

we got to be careful because the food system that we live in, the agricultural system that we live in is not very, it's not as good as our grandparents, our green peppers now are not as good as our grandparents, green peppers, unless you get them from the right spot, you know, and trying to eat good whole organic foods and whatnot. So of course, you're doing a little bit of damage by eating the crap, but you're also a kind of kind of rewarding your body, rewarding your mind that, okay, let me take take the let me take my foot off the gas a little bit. Let me be a normal person for a second. Let me let me harvest a little body fat and let my body thicken back up into into a kind of a normal, a normal body. And then obviously, I'll shrink it back down once fight

comes. But I was in training camp essentially from March all the way through October, with my last two fights. And, and well, like the fight October 24, I didn't actually fight. But I appreciate our man there saying making 155 like a professional. That's why I did it. You know, I wanted I wanted Dana White and the UFC fan base right away to see who Michael Chandler is. I'm going to show up. I'm going to be there on time on weight. I've never pulled out of a fight, never said no to a fight. I've never missed weight show up on the dot. Who were you most excited? So say you're there. I mean, you were there. And overall, was it a good experience? Was it pretty crazy going over there? Had you ever been to the Middle East? I had not been to the Middle East. But to me, it was

just more my first fight week with the UFC. And it couldn't have been better, man. It was so awesome. Obviously, I think a fight island fight week is a little bit different than other fight weeks. So they rolled out the red carpet for us. They, you know, I was just getting to rub elbows with my new colleagues, my new my new coworkers, the from Dana White all the way down to the person who like checks you in at the very beginning, who's kind of new to the UFC. All of them are the new heartbeats that are in my life there. It's part of my company, who I'm going to, you know, kind of sail off into the rest of my career with working with. So I wanted to make it a good impression on them, show them who I am, show them. Did you wear cologne or not? Be honest.

Cologne? No. Axe. Really? No. Do people wear Axe anymore? Sorry. It'd be so great if you did. It'd be awesome. Hey, I'm just wondering, I got to go check in. Yeah, totally. I'm sure there's some guys doing that. Yeah. But yeah, I just wonder if you will put on cologne or something. Yeah, because you're showing up. You're kind of the new kind of kid in the candy store. You're also kind of the new candy in the candy store. I am it. And it's great too, because I'm not just, I'm not the young kid who got a really sweet spinning back kick knockout from Dana White Contender Series, who's 19 years old. Right. I mean, you can say Sugar Sean O'Malley if you want to. Oh yeah, actually, actually, that is exactly who he is. But he came

in. Sean's great. But yeah, no, I like it. No, Sean's amazing. And, and, but you don't have that young, you don't, it's not like you have this youthful hype. You have this long trajectory. Yeah. And anybody who, the good thing is, and I talked about this the other day, you can't outrun your reputation. And your reputation takes years to build and seconds to break down and just fall by the wayside, you know, and I think, I think I have a good reputation in the industry, you know, when it comes to, and it was, and it was great, it got me in trouble with a lot of the journalists throughout my free agency process, because you're like, you know, the biggest names and in mixed martial arts like journalism are

like, Hey man, give me some inside information. Hey man, let me break the story. But I'm like, listen, back off. This is going to, I'm going to let the UFC do their thing whenever, whenever it comes out, it's going to come out. I don't, I didn't get into the position that I'm in without being a phenomenal employee. Be a good employee. And that's what these young kids miss. They got to remember, man, you're still an employee. These guys still sign your paycheck. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. And that was me protecting myself, protecting Bellator. Before I left Bellator, that was me protecting the UFC. That was me protecting the other organizations that I was negotiating with, even though I knew I was most, I was going to head in the UFC direction if

that door opened itself. But you know, I had a good reputation coming into this fight week. And I think I exceeded people's expectations. I hopefully were like, hope I had a lot of a lot of the UFC reach out to me and say, Hey man, this is great to work with you. You're easy to work with your eager. I also just got done talking yesterday to the one of the UFC PR people. And it's like, I appreciate you saying that, but you have no idea how underutilized I feel like I've been over the last 10 years, you know, no offense to Bellator, but they didn't use me enough. They didn't build me enough. They didn't give me the outside, the outside opportunities to be on the big stages. I, I was utilized at about 20%. I believe 20% was me stepping into the cage, putting on great

performances for them, which that's, you know, one of the most important parts. But when it comes to being an athlete, man, microphones, cameras, voice, word of mouth, that's how you build a great platform. Do you feel like it's a, do you feel like it was any like, like it was a shun towards you at all? Or do you just feel like it's just their company, the way it is, the size of the company, you know, like you can only get so big at Kmart, you know, before you walk into Walmart, you're like, damn, you know, they got everything. 100%. No, I think it's their business model. They are, they are the legitimate number two organization in the world. And their business model was, Hey, we're going to run a skeleton crew. We're going to put on the best fights we can.

And we're going to, we're going to coast and we're going to do our thing. That's fine. But that's not, it's, it was against the antithesis against the theos of who I am. What I am is, it's moving forward, taking chances, investing time, energy resources to eventually reap the benefits. And I think that's what, that's what Dana White and the UFC have done, man. They, they, you saw it during the pandemic. Dana White was the first person to get on the microphone and say, we will be back. We will be the first sport back. And you know, guys like, guys like, I mean, it was, it was Justin Gaethje, Tony Ferguson, headlined that, that first card. And those guys were waiting in the wings. And I'm over here in Bellator, last spot on my contract,

worldwide pandemic, waiting, man, when am I going to get to fight? And that's when fighting is growing. I mean, fighting itself like was growing at that point. Like I started to learn a lot more about Bellator, like Nick Davis is our producer back in LA. And he's a huge degenerate gambler and MMA fan. And, but he's always like, he knows every fighter from top to bottom of every organization, but he started getting me into different Bellator. He's like, you got to watch this. So it's, fighting was growing. And so it is interesting kind of that maybe where you, it was Bellator missing some opportunities to grab one of some of that market share, even if UFC was the one that was kind of leading it.

100%. 1,000% because even, even though, you know, they're different organizations and, and I think Bellator, I think Bellator, of course they used, you know, they used the coronavirus pandemic in which the whole world right now, if you, you know, order a t-shirt offline and it takes an extra two weeks, all they got to say is, well, it's COVID. Oh, it's crazy. It's like, you know, it's like, like we were saying, like you can go figure rear in somebody like, oh man, I'm sorry, dude, you know, COVID and it's like coronavirus. So it's like, everybody can use that and not to downplay, you know, the disease, but people can use coronavirus right now as, as a totally an excuse for anything. And I told her, I couldn't get an erection. I was like, I got

coronavirus. Exactly. You know, coronavirus in my penis. Just like, I'm just nervous about coronavirus ahead somewhere else, but it was a nice girl to actually, man. She fucking took care of it for like two weeks, hoping it would get better and it didn't. Oh, like, oh, maybe it wasn't coronavirus. You brought your soup. Yeah, it might just be erectile dysfunction. Yeah. So yeah, it is interesting to see how they haven't maybe, maybe haven't picked up a lot of, like, or just haven't grown their own business. And maybe they have, I don't know, but you didn't feel like they were. No, they haven't. And they have grown and they've built and that was the thing about it. Like, I was content too. And I said this, I knew I was probably going to make a change,

but I would have been happy as well getting a really great offer from Bellator and and and retiring there and doing all that. And maybe maybe that was true. Maybe maybe it was just a little bit of negotiation tax. But there was part of me that that said, man, I I cared about those guys and cared. I cared about building that organization. That that organization is not who they are without my fights with Eddie Alvarez, Benson Henderson, me losing to Will Brooks and then come lose. Who was that pigskin guy you lost to? What was that guy's name? Pigskin? No, what was his nickname? Punch? Punchdog or something? Pitbull? Pitbull. Pitbull. Yeah, sorry. I didn't know. I didn't know it was exactly. Did you feel bad? Did you feel were you bombed

that you didn't get to fight him again before you left? No, and that's that's the beautiful thing about it. I've never really I'm not about because to me, it's not the person. And trust me, I there's no more animosity that I've ever had with any of my opponents than him because he's made some baseless claims about me using PEDs and just this kind of silly stuff that has no there's there's no brother that doesn't even feel like a stunt double or something like a twin brother. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And they're both they're both from Brazil. They if anything, they, you know, probably have that war. And it's like, so I'm not really worried about it. Fucking papaya. Yeah, exactly. So so we've had we had some, you know, our our interactions where we don't really like each

other. But to me, I'm like, I don't need to get that one back. I don't care. The funny thing is, I'm in a much better position right now getting ready to fight. I'm one. I'm one degree of separation away from fighting for UFC title. I will be UFC champion by July of 2021. So you think I'm worried about his little self. And yeah, disgruntled. He is he's not he's not happy about his contract. He's not happy about his promotion or where he's at or what he's doing. He's just an unhappy person. And he wanted to throw shade at me because he has a scarcity mindset where I whereas I have an abundance mindset. And it's very important to distinguish the two. A scarcity mindset says, because you are having success that that is going to take away from the success that I could possibly grab

because there's a pie, there's a pie and there's only so much of it. Man, there's an abundance of money. There's an abundance of success. There's an abundance of impact out there for you to grab and your success does nothing to take away from my success that I'm allowed to have or able to have. And that's a lot of people. That's huge, man. And I've struggled with that in my own success, like getting more successful and then getting scared, you know, operating from a place of fear. Man, it's it's very and it's it's the it's the wounds of our past, the stories that we've told ourselves. Man, I told myself so many stories inside my head that where I would just sabotage myself and give myself permission to lose instead of permission to win permission to be successful.

You know, I grew out of it after college, luckily. But I just underperformed so much in college that I said, man, I got to stop this. I got to figure something out. I got to take extreme ownership of what's going on in between these years, like you are what you are and where you are because of what has gone into your mind and the stories and the and the myths and the the trends that you tell yourself over, you know, your 30 year life or 40 year life, your 15 year old life, whatever it may be. And man, you got to you got to kick that in the teeth. Here's a guy right here who has a question right here. Hey, Mike and Theo, it's Aaron from Oklahoma City. Well, this is a question for both of you. I guess Theo, you already have one. But Mike, would you ever consider growing

in Nebraska, Nick Warmer? He got that work on that bromane, maybe hanging off the back. That's nice and nice. And did he straighten that? He may have straightening. He also may have died it a little, which I don't mind. What do you call it in Nebraska? That skunk dip. I don't know what it is. What's that call you call it in Nebraska? Nebraska and play the end of that force again, Riley. Yes, Theo, you already have one. But Mike, would you ever consider growing in Nebraska, Nick Warmer? Back warmer, baby. Have you ever tried to, you know, to increase your flair by doing something wild like that? You ever do a rat tail or something? I could see you at a rat tail. Maybe I could I could do a rat tail. No, I mean, I haven't I haven't really. I mean, the

I did have a haircut that was kind of a little edgy. You know, when that movie, the you know, Fury came out with Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt, where he's the tank war. He's that picture. Do you mind rally? He's the tank operator and he's got like four other guys, three other guys, Shia LaBeouf and some young guy and Michael, Michael Sarah, Michael Sarah, Michael Sarah, the skinny little white guy. Yeah. No, not him. Michael Pena, the like the Latino guy. Yeah, he's hilarious. Yeah, he's awesome. Greatest haircut of all time, dude. And you know, he's got freaking, you know, he's got plugs in the front or something where he got a hair hair transplant. Oh yeah, I've had that. Yeah, I got it. Did you really? Yeah. Got some of the

mullet taken out of the back and put into the front, bro. Does it ever fall out? I'm pressing it. I don't know. I don't even know if it ever even came in. That's the problem. They, they, your hairline's like, your hairline's perfect though, right? They put you to sleep and then they, or they don't put you to sleep, but they take it out of the back and they put it into the front and so with a robot? Oh, no, I have it do them hand by hand. Let's have a robot back there. You know what I'm saying? I have a fucking mustache. Don't, don't record this right now because I, I have a mustache. Man, like I got a freaking receding hairline back. You could do it easy, man. It's real easy process. That's cool. I thought about trying to find somebody locally

that would do it pro bono, you know, just to talk about, I mean, everybody's had it done. There's, there's a play. There's we grow hair.com. Oh, I've seen the, I've seen the billboard. You see the billboard, right? We grow hair. That just sounds vague. I'm not trying to find a sharecropper. I'm trying to find somebody. This is important. This is important for, for our, you know, like, our like, you know, 30, 40 age demographic where it's like, man, you know, a lot of people got some, got some hair. Like, look at the one, look at Brad Pitt right there in his tuxedo, man. Like, look at that hairline. That is absolutely perfect. Yeah. Go click on that. All right. Please. He's from Missouri, man. You know,

wow. But, but anyway, so that was probably the most, uh, that was probably the most kind of statement of a haircut I ever made is, is I kind of did the fury for a little while till my receding hairline started creeping up too much. And I was like, I mean, it's not working anymore. I got to go with this faux hawk thing. Yeah. It's longer and I got to get a haircut, but so yeah, so that's about as, as wild as you would go in the hair world. Yeah, I think so. I'm going to ask you, let me ask you about, um, and sorry if Riley seems a little off, Riley just had his first kiss actually the other day. Kissed your girl for the first time. Really? What's her name, man? Um, are we Maddie? Yeah. Okay. You like her?

Well, let's just say I did. You did? What? Something happened? Oh, yeah. Uh, last night, I found out. Yeah. That she kissed another guy. Oh, um, way more than that. Oh gosh. Oh my God, man. I'm sorry, dude. I didn't know that. And unfortunately we didn't have, we don't have the on mic today either, Riley. I'm sorry about that, but man, well, you had a first kiss. Yeah. A long time ago. It wasn't, bro. It wasn't. Be honest, dog. I don't, I don't remember. Oh, come on, man. Brandy. Her name was Brandy with an I. Oh, yeah, bro. Brandy with an I always kissed people, dude. Brandy with an I is the most Missouri. Is that where you're from? Missouri? Yeah, Missouri. The most Missouri type of name. Brandy

with an I. Brandy with an I lives close to the interstate, bro. I know that. Brandy with an I. She used to, uh, she used to invite all the rich girls into, she used to invite the rich girls over and they'd ride bikes out and they'd get in fights with the, the, the other kids, the poor kids. My kind of girl. Brandy with an I. My first one was Chrissy with an I. Chrissy. Hello. Chrissy with an I would come out of the woodwork and her beat up Mongoose like, what's up girl? You're on the wrong side of the tracks. Chrissy with an I, bro. Chrissy with an I.

Damn. So, Riley, man, it fell apart, huh? Yeah, it did. So, how do you feel about it? You all right? Are you? Um, I'm, I'm keeping it together. Keeping it together? That's good. Man. Well, thanks for being here today, man. I didn't know that that had happened and we'll discuss it next time. Um, and sorry you had to be here to learn about that news as well, Mike. Yeah, what the heck, man?

But it's not you, man. It's her, you know? It's definitely her. It's her loss, man. Um, here's a young fellow right here. Is that post Malone, dude? That could be post Malone. Gang gang. This one's for Mike. I'm just wondering how long does it take to get that freaking insanely ripped? Is it something that, um, it's always been with you or at one point when you started to fight,

you know, and do what you're doing in training, did you notice it happening over time? And if so, how long? Gang gang. Gang gang. Yeah, you're the, when I envision you being born, this is what I envision. I envision you come out of the womb, you turn around, and then you start doing the ropes exercise with your own umbilical cord. Yeah.

That's exactly what I envision. I like that. No, I think that's pretty much how it happened. No, I, uh, Who got you into fitness? I mean, I just, I, it was a, it was a, it was a byproduct of what I have to do, you know? And I, I just truly believe and I, and I get this all the time, like people will see me squatting heavy or bench pressing heavy or doing some dynamic stuff.

And people like, Oh my God, I'm, my knees hurt. Just watching that or my back hurts. Just watching this. And I just, I feel for people cause I don't know what position they're in or what their background is or how much they have or haven't worked out. But I truly believe I've wrestled, I wrestled for um, 12 years or whatever. And now I've been fighting now for 11 and whatever it is 20 last 20 years. I've been wrestling and then now fighting and I have very few injuries.

And I think a lot of it has to do with, I think there's a genetic component. There's a luck component. Of course I'm never going to, never going to act like there isn't. But lifting weights, heavy external force of adding weights and lifting heavy and bullet proofing your body through strengthening, conditioning has really made my body, you know, very, very dense. I think my bone density is very, very high. And I get very few injuries because of strength training.

So I just loved it and I realized if I can put, put in the work in the weight room, it's going to bullet proof my body inside those wrestling matches, inside those wrestling practices and now inside the mixed martial arts world. And so I've been doing it since college. I mean college, we lifted two, three days a week, heavy, hard, intense. And then we were wrestling six days a week. So my body just became a machine, but you know, to answer his question, it takes me about 12 weeks, you know, um, to get primed up, to get completely primed up, you know,

to go from, you know, 10%, but I never get above 10% body fat. And that's one of the things about mixed martial arts. People like, oh, he walks around at 198 and cuts down to 155 or 190 and cuts down to 155. And so yeah, but how fat is he? How, how chunky is he? You know, we can all have a propensity to get chunky and get heavy. But for me, I keep, I keep my weight around 180, two to 187 max, usually right around 183 to 185, um, and 10% body fat, you know, because I just don't like to get that far out of shape.

And then it takes me 12 weeks of discipline to shrink my body a little bit. Obviously a lot of, get rid of a lot of body fat or probably 6% get down to about four or five, 6% body fat, lose a little bit of muscle and then get down to 155. Damn dude. I freaking, I think I ate 10% body fat last night. Honestly. When you're in, uh, when you're in, uh, Dubai, right? That's where the fight, sorry, when you're in Abu Dhabi and, and it's getting close to fight time.

Did you have an inkling? Are you getting word from people there that both guys are making the fight? Like, are you, is there a point where it starts to feel like, okay, I might actually be a real substitute and then it goes from, okay, this is, I'm just going to be here. Yeah. I mean, I, it wasn't until the day before Wayans that my man, that my manager even kind of asked, you know, and then even then the UFC was essentially like, well, I would imagine, you know, by, by the morning after fight fight or the morning after Wayans, the day at the

morning of the fight, by the time that we get word that Habib and Gaichi both passed their COVID test and they're negative, you know, you, you should be pretty good to go. And then they were like, well, but actually, like, what if they get hurt on the way to the arena? It was one of those deals where I was essentially just the backup all the way until those guys stepped into the cage at that point. I, you know, had pizza for lunch because I mean, what was I going to do? Like just continue to eat chicken and broccoli all the way till 9pm. And, you know, at that point, you kind of just look foolish.

Like you're just kind of like outside of the ring, like going like this. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's one of those things too, where it's like, it would be an even better story. I also like, of course, we joked of like with my manager, my manager, long time manager, Randall Allman was there who I'm good friends with, but he also handles my stuff. So we were there and it was like, man, let's just, you know, go like have a celebratory beer or celebratory, you know, have drink before this and be like, well, yeah, but what if I get the call joking and be like, well, it'd kind of be a cool, even better story.

Great story. Even better story. I got the call while, you know, they just poured a Stella or something, you know, and I'm eating a pizza. Chandler B. Khabib after two my time. Exactly. You know, like, so I didn't end up having an alcoholic beverage that day until after the fights were over or whatever. But it would have been, we were just joking, like it would have been an even better story. And who would you go? Sorry. And in some ways, it would probably make me fight even better because I'd be like, I got nothing to lose for sure. Because I just had, you know,

two of my ties and it's all the bars have recede in your in your shorts. Who would you, was there a rather where you're like, if you started to think like, who would I rather fight? I, my answer to that is I love, I would love the idea of fighting both of them. But at that point, you have to fight Khabib just because he's the number one guy. Oh, wow, really? Yeah, because if you're going to fight, I mean, yeah, it would be better to have a 12 week training camp focused just on Habib, obviously, when you have the opportunity of a lifetime to,

you know, beat an undefeated fighter, the best fighter in lightweight history, and get the world title. But for me, you got to take the opportunities when you can. They don't just hand out UFC, you know, title fights like it's nothing. So for me, it would have been Habib, just because I would have had the opportunity to capture the belt that night. And a fight with me and Justin Gate, he's going to happen. Just like I said, a fight with me and Porya is going to happen. These fights are going to happen. But so if you had the opportunity, and I knew we all knew Habib, we didn't know he was going to retire that night, or at least say he's going to retire. We don't know yet. But I thought for sure he's going to

have one, maybe two fights left in them. So you want to, I want to get that fight before he retires. I would not want to get that fight. But I, but I, but that's a different mindset, man. Now is when you're there and you're in that environment, is there a level of royalty that kind of proceeds and surrounds Habib that doesn't surround anybody else in a way? No, I, yeah, I'm not, I'm not really, I'm not that you're thinking of, but do you feel, is there anything like that in the air? No, I'm just wondering, he wasn't there that much, to be honest with you. Like I saw Justin Gates, he a couple of times his mom and dad were there, his brothers, his brother looks just like them. They're all from Arizona. They're kind of doing

their thing. Man, me and Justin Gates, you're very similar man, small town, blue collar, wrestling families. Like that's, it looked like my family walking around if we were in Abu Dhabi at a hotel somewhere. So he was there. He was present and he was seen a lot, had a couple of conversations with him or his team or whatever. Habib was nowhere to be found. Habib had like his own training facility. He had his own hotel. He had his own everything. He showed up in armored cars and motorcades and helicopters and all kinds of stuff. So he is like royalty over there because it's the Middle East. It's close to Russia. He's, he's Muslim. You know, so he's, he's like royalty. So there, there is, but for me as like a red, white and blue blooded American, I'm like,

this is silly man, you know, it's like whatever, you know, so, but you got to respect it. Now, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want that to come off like I don't respect him. Like I respect him a ton as a competitor inside the cage, what he's done, his accomplishments, plus winning his last fight after the loss of his father and all that kind of stuff. I respect him, respect the heck out of him for that. But for the most part, he was like, that's just like, all right, bro. And I don't know, he showed up. He looked like a skeleton at Wayans. He looked like it was, it was questionable whether he even made weight. Wow. You know, you're just like, dude, be a professional, make the weight,

show up with your chest puffed out and a smile on your face, do your job. Yeah. There's a video where it says it looks like they didn't even check his weight kind of. Supposedly they did, you know, did you, I mean, does that seem normal to you? Did it feel, I mean, I will say, I will say Daniel Cormier brought this up and it is true. They, at the hotel, I had to step on the scale and I weighed 154.9 and then they said, okay, you can get on the bus. So if I was 155.2 or whatever there, they might have been like, no, you know, you can't get on the bus until you cut the weight. Then again, maybe Habib was like, I'm right at 155.1. By the time I get over there, I can float point one. Maybe the scale, it's a,

a lot of times your balance scales, you know, those old school balance scales are a little bit more lenient than your digital scale. Cause the digital scale will tell you point, boom, whatever it is. The balance scale, all they have to do is have a little bit of daylight and you're technically in there. So there's almost like a point to swing. But yeah, I mean, he stepped on the scale. It was going up. They swiped it and, but it's, you know, it's conspiracy theory. I mean, it's, it's, man, they, they've been doing this for 26, 27 years. You know, there's, hasn't been many controversies. So whatever it wasn't meant to be for me to step inside the occasion. Nor, nor would I have, if Habib didn't make weight at that moment, he would have got time to cut weight anyway. So

I wasn't worried about it. Here's a question right here from a young fella right here. What up Theo? It's your boy Brody from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Call me with a question from Michael Chandler. How do you keep your head held high after an ass whipping? That's something I want to know. Gang, baby, love you. Love you too, bro. Well, I know it's for Michael, but I'll tell you, I remember when I was in school, I've told this story before, but they, some kid beat my ass, right? Which is easy to do. If I was somebody else, I would beat my ass. So don't take a lot of cloud out of it, you know, like easy dude. I was, it was easy to beat my ass. But, but afterwards at school, they made us stand in the hall, me and the kid to beat my ass and hope put our arms on

each other's shoulders. And we had to stand like that all day in the hall. So then like, I ended up becoming friends with the guy. He's still a friend of mine today. This kid, Brad Castleman, great guy. No way. Yeah. And it wasn't that good about, I let him, I let him hit me a couple of first three or four times. I let him hit me. And then I fell down, bro. That was my so you didn't get in trouble. You just had to do that. We had to do that. That's cool. Dude, that's, but it was interesting because by the end of the day, we were friends, dude. You're like, well, we got to say, oh man, what, what, so what do you like to do for fun? Yeah, totally. Like, man, like, I know I hated you this morning, but like, dude, I really hate Brad. I really hate

Joe. You know, like, yeah, let's go fuck him up. We should go fight Joe, man. Bro, come over. I'll invite you over this weekend. I got a rich kid coming over and help me out. He's coming over and it's a real shiny yellow horror with the gyro over on the front pegs. Yeah. And his duck head, freaking shirt and shorts. That's a good question though. How do you maintain some composure and keep your head up after a loss? I mean, I think kind of like what we were talking earlier is it's, it's all about the process too. You know, if whenever you realize that the journey is really the process, you know, like the process is the goal, the journey is the goal, realizing that you're going to have wins, you're going to have losses. And I realized over the

last couple of years, and it took me a while to realize this, that every single person that I've ever looked up to, whether I know them, or there's or, or there's some sports figures, some icon, I'm like, man, that person, I respect them. They all have losses in their past. They've all have ups, they all have downs, every single person you've ever looked up to as one has a one point or another been a failure, failure of a competition failure, a failure of something. So when you realize like my next fight, I might lose, I don't know. But don't be afraid of the loss. Don't be afraid of it. But when I have lost, for me, it's the it's it's the beauty of it being the most embarrassing one of the most embarrassing moments of your life, because it's not like you

lost a baseball game. It's not like you lost a football game and you just lost a fight, you know, you just got bested by another individual who is getting their hand raised while you have to hang your head or and collect half a paycheck and go home and lick your wounds. But I think it's just once again, realizing that losses are part of the journey, right? You know, lick your wounds, get around the most important people in your life, be around the people that love you, be around the people that believe in you, be around the people that love you, whether you win or lose, make sure you stay built up. And then take notes on how you can get better, how you can how you can become a better man, competitor, woman, whatever it may be. Wow. Man, dude, I wish you

lived in my head, bro. That would be helpful. Well, we live in the same city now. That's a good point, dude. It's close, man. It's getting closer. It's getting closer. Here's a question right here that we have from a young man. What up, Theo gang brother? What up, Michael? Hope you're doing well. Hope your brain works all right. Mine doesn't, you know, nine concussions and whatnot, but imagine you feel similar sometimes. Anyways, I was wanting someone who's like just getting into fighting and stuff and like wanting to have that ability of true self defense, not just swinging and whaling. If all I'm doing is watching these videos, right, and not going to any classes or anything like that, what would you say is the number one thing to pay attention to some of the

takeaways that someone who is overall like a YouTube type learner, how can what can I do to take away from from actual legitimate professional fights that would help me if I were to get in some sort of, you know, scrap of dapple out here on these streets, because it gets tough out here in the center at least sometimes. Amen, bro. You know, so yeah, man, just wondering what some of that advice might be. I love what you guys do. Keep it up. Theo, you the man, gang, gang brother. Let's keep rolling. Amen. Let's keep rolling, man. That's a good question, man, because a lot of net bangers out there, they call them on foods gone wild. They call them net bangers and it's just mean like people that are learned just doing stuff only on the net, not in real time. But that's a

great question, man. Nine concussions. Damn, bro. That's fucking thinking with a Rubik's cube at that point. No offense, bud. But but yeah, that's a great question, Michael. What do you got? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people and you've talked about there's a lot of people learning things through YouTube these days. But I mean, when you're watching fights, whether it's, you know, hopefully it's professional fights, you know, so you're, you're learning from professionals, if you will. Man, defense is underrated, you know, keep your hands up, learning, watch, watch how in a fight people use the distance and the timing. A lot of times it's not necessarily the biggest punch that lands the one that they see coming. It's the one that they don't see coming

because you timed it perfectly. So when you watch some of these crazy knockouts where a guy's looking, looking at you this way, expecting you to throw that jab, but the hook comes here and hits him in the, in the, in the chin from almost a side the side, you know, the, the distance, the timing, defense, and then the space between the two, the spatial awareness of the fighters, whether they're going in for a takedown and then throwing an uppercut or looking like they're going to throw a head strike and then go for the takedown, you know, I mean, outside, I don't know if my man's looking to get into mixed martial arts fighting and professional rings, or if he's just like he said, you know, in the streets, I guess he was saying in the streets, just have a little

bit of a self-defense, but can you learn from YouTube or do you have to get out there and practice? I think fighting, you need to be, that's something you need to need to be there in the physical, like in, in person, I would say, you know, like obviously, you know, you can't wash them shit on your phone and then go fight. I mean, it's going to be harder. It is. I mean, obviously, there's something to be said for fighters like myself who, who I watch film, and then I can like almost learn through osmosis and say, man, okay, in my next sparring session, I'm going to try this. But without that sparring session, it was just, you know, and it's also real time. It's fast. The craziest thing about fighting is it's just so fast. You constantly

reaction time and you only get that reaction time through 10,000 hours of repetition and getting after it. So you got to be there and there in the physical form. I don't know if they're in the central east. If his MMA gyms are open now because of the pandemic, but man, get somewhere and get some drills in, you know, in America, we have sometimes traditions that, you know, are half half handed or half hazard and old fashioned. And it's kind of wild to think that a lot of people are still wiping their buttocks instead of washing it after they go to the toilet or do toilet. Hello, Tushy cleans your butt with a precise stream of fresh water for just $79. I mean, let's be honest with each other. For years,

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slash Thio to get 10% off. There's a special offer for our listeners. Clean your booty right. Clean your booty right. Go to HelloTushy.com slash Theo for 10% off. HelloTushy.com slash Theo. So when you see, you see like the fight between Dustin and Connor supposed to happen, right? Is there a preference? And I watched you the other day, you were talking about like a top 10 guys and kind of rating the top 10. Just sharing your thoughts on them. I thought it was really real eloquent about it and shared some nice thoughts about all the guys. Is there like a fight that you really want? Is there a fight that you, does it change day to day, week to week? Like a month ago, if I'd have asked you,

was it a different person than today? So a month ago, if you would have asked me, I would have said, you know, it's Tony Ferguson. But then after Habib was talking about retiring and then Justin Gaichi was talking about fighting within six to eight weeks. And then also Connor and Poirier were talking about fighting 170. Dana White has made it very clear. If those guys are fighting 170, they're not going to be, you know, they obviously aren't going to be getting a title shot, you know, anytime soon. As soon as Habib retired, you know, I was like, Hey man, I'll fight Justin Gaichi next week for the title six weeks from now, November, December. Fuck, I'll find him at the breakfast buffet in the morning. I'll fight him next morning before the plane

takes off. You know, let's just keep the, keep the octagon set up. Let's go. You know, so. So that was then. So at that point, you're that you're like, yeah, so Habib's retired. They kind of changed things. It changed things. And I said, Hey, I'll fight, I'll fight Dustin or I'll fight Tony or Gaichi for, you know, whether it's a number one contender spot or whether it's for the title because you had Connor and, and Poirier talking about fighting 170. So they were almost out of the discussion. Still, right now you have Connor and Poirier. Looks like it's almost done. It looks like they're going to be fighting 155. So those two are booked. You got Gaichi who just fought. So chances are he might want a little bit of time off. So I think Tony Ferguson, I say Tony

Ferguson for two reasons. Number one, he makes the most sense because he's been the guy who sat out the longest. And secondly, if I, if I do think Habib is coming back, I would say he's beaten Connor Habib is beaten Connor. He's beaten Poirier. He's beaten Gaichi now. And he, the only fight left out there for him was the Ferguson fight. But if I beat Ferguson, I leapfrog Ferguson. And now you get Chandler Habib for his 30 and 0 fight or 29 and one fight instead of Tony Ferguson. So that kind of gives me the best option to, to win, leapfrog him, fight a top five guy, and be the most appealing matchup, the most challenging matchup for Habib and Michael Madoff. Wow. Was it disappointing when, and have you talked to Tony about it? You guys

had some exchange about it, right? We had an exchange a little bit. And then even he, he commented on one of my Instagram posts, like train hard, see you soon. You know, so he's such a unique guy. He's such like a, yeah, he's such a anomaly. He's an anomaly. He's a unique guy. You don't know, you don't know, you don't know what he's going to say. And then you also don't know what he's going to do inside that cage. You know, so it's wild. And it's just like, I think it's a perfect, it's, it's a fight that scares me, you know, so it's a fight that's great. You know, it's great for me. It's great for great introduction for me. So he's a top five guy. He's a scary guy. He was 12 and 0 before he was on a 12 fight win streak. But before he lost

his last fight, we can't forget that. Like he's still one of the most dangerous guys in the division. Definitely the most unpredictable guy. And how quickly that gets forgotten after the Gachie fight? So quick. Isn't a great, I mean, how quickly suddenly he's like, he seems, like there's this, you know, yeah, he's not the same guy. Exactly. And granted, he took a lot of damage in that fight. But still, man, like we, we all take damage, you know, we all win or lose, we take damage, you know? So it's just, it is a very much, and that's the hardest thing about it. But I think it's also the most beautiful thing about it, because the, some of the fans do realize what us fighters have to go through. Like that our head is on the chopping block, essentially,

every single time we fight, where it's like, man, it's a what have you done for me lately business. But going back to like you were talking about pourier, it's like, it's cool to see his he's become a hero, win or lose. He's been one of those guys who are going to come in if he wins. People love him. If he loses, people are rooting for him, wanting to pick himself back up and get back in the wind column. And I looked at myself that kind of same way. I'm going to, I'm going to come into the UFC, no matter what, I might have, you know, five fights left in me, 12 fights left in me. But either way, there's a bunch of big fights out there for me to just have a blast, to be put on this, you know, awesome platform. Who knows, I could go 500, the next six fights,

I could go eight and oh, my next eight fights, I could win the title and hold it for 10 years. I don't know. You know, so we'll see. It's wild, man. It's crazy. And it's so it's amazing. Really, that 155 is, I mean, it's really almost the best. I mean, it's, is there any division that has that much, that many individual guys who have so much, just like you're saying, they can all fight, they could all stay in that, in the top 10 for the next five, 10 years. Yeah, I don't think so. Not, not when it comes to divisions, you know, you got your individual guys and then you got a guy like Israel Adesanya, who's, who fights at 185. Now he's going up the fight for the title at 205 and John Jones just left 205, went to heavyweight and as Adesanya is talking about going up to heavyweight. So that

right there kind of shows you that there's not a ton of depth in some of these. And I don't say that like they're still, it's sometimes the depth that sometimes it looks like there's a lack of depth because the champion has beaten all the, what number one contenders similar to like kind of how Khabib is done, but Jones too, Jones, there was nobody left from really, he keeps fighting guys two and three times exactly, but, but you look at all the guys that Jones fought. And if Jones, if we take Jones out of the picture and he retired tomorrow like Khabib did, you immediately they start looking at Dominic Reyes and Jean Lavovic and the guy with the Thor hammer on his chest, he fights this weekend, Santos, Thiago Santos, you know, just a ton of big name guys,

you know, so it's big name guys, but they looked not that great against a guy like John Jones, you know, so Alexander Gustafson, if you know, exactly. So, but man, look at the light, look at the lightweight division. Connor is the anchor. He's the biggest name, obviously. He got me the new guy who came in, who came in right at the right time. Tony Ferguson was a household name, Poria, who's a household name, Justin Gates, who is a household name. I mean, you've gotten thrown in. I mean, you suddenly like, does it feel a lot different being Michael Chandler two months ago who was in just, you know, in the, not the XFL because it's certainly a lot bigger than that. That's a shitty comparison, but it's, it's similar. I mean, it's not, it's not

the NFL, you know, right? Yeah. Being adjacent, right? Being UFC adjacent to suddenly, I mean, this is, you know, it's, it's, I mean, it's definitely like, it's like put you in a star spot in a way, you know? It is. It's cool. And it, and it, and a lot of it or some of it had to do with the way that I came over and, and the, I guess, even, even I did Bruce Buffer's podcast and he's like, Hey, he's like, Michael, you know, exactly. It's time podcast. Bruce Buffer was like, Hey, you know, I've been with the UFC now for 25 years and I'm hard pressed to rack in my brain, trying to think of another free agent that came over and got this much splash and this much, you know, momentum. And part of that is great, but part of that also, you know,

kind of exposes you to some hate too, because people are like, who's this guy? I think he is, man. Why is the UFC, why are they force feeding us Michael, this Michael Chandler guy? Who's this pretty boy? Yeah. Exactly. Well, that's part of it too. They're like, this guy doesn't look like a handsome guy. Who's this lifeguard? I read one comment. Who's this lifeguard? Lifeguard. Exactly. That's, I'm like, dang, man, I know. But it's like, man, Do you even know CPR? Honestly? No, I don't. Unbelievable. Exactly, man. I can't even swim. No. No. It's like, you know, but the good thing is I will get into the octagon soon and people will

realize, okay, he's not just a bodyguard, lifeguard looking dude, whatever. And bodybuilder, forget someone called me a fitness model, because I've, you know, the UFC took some photos of me on the beach and I'm like, what am I supposed to do, man? I'm out here on Fight Island. I'm probably not going to fight. Let me do something. You know, like, uh, so it's one of them deals where, you know, just do a little bit of research, look up my fights on YouTube. Yeah, I've lost, but I've also won. I've won in dominant fashion. You'll see, you'll see the passion that I bring to the cage and being bring to that and I will bring to the octagon. So it's, uh, it feels much bigger. A lot of people is their first introduction to your name. Exactly. So it does, and it does

feel much bigger. It does, you know, the, the numbers are growing, the, the notoriety is growing and in a lot of ways it inspires me and motivates me to be better, to, to work even harder to, to build even more, you know, because like I said, it wasn't enough for me to just put on the UFC gloves and put on the UFC fight kit and take the photos in front of the UFC green screen and get on the UFC broadcast. Like, man, I want to get inside of that octagon and I want to fight and I want to prove, not prove, I want to show the people who I am when loser draw. That's, that's going to take care of itself. Yeah. Well, but the passion that I bring to the, to the octagon, the preparation and the manner in which I prepare myself is, is all going to stay the same if, if

not be even more increased right now. And I'm excited for the opportunity. How big is that white chair there and in Abu Dhabi? The white chair at the, yeah, that big white chair at the UFC thing and then like a big white chair out there that people were sitting in. In the W? At the, at the hotel in Abu Dhabi. Yeah. At the UFC ring, at the ring out there. Didn't have like a, I didn't see a white chair. You didn't. I'm just seeing pictures of people sitting in one. Did you see the picture? Was it like a wooden white chair on the beach, on the beach? Yeah, it looks real big. It is big. It is. It is. It's really big and it's really deep because I was like trying to lean back and I couldn't, I got short legs. Don't tell anybody I got some short legs. I mean, I've watched

a lot of hours of footage of you. I got some freaking short legs. You can tell they're not extremely long, but yeah. I mean, we have, we have a big couch in my house too. And I was like, gosh, dang, I hate these long couches, man, because if I get my, my low back up against the back of the couch, my little feet dangle like, you know, like you're waiting for Christmas morning. I was so excited. I'm a dad, you know. Is there a fighter you think that that doesn't want to fight you in that, in that top group? I will say for a lot of guys, it's risky because you're that new element. It's like, and you're coming from a different place where, I mean, I'm sure all the guys are familiar with you for sure, but it's not what they've been looking at. It's not their, you know,

when they're looking at their top 10, it's not what they've been looking at. The problem with mixed martial arts is not the problem. It's just the nature of mixed martial arts is everybody's tough to some degree. Then there's some really, then there's some really, really tough guys who don't have that big of names. And then there's some really, really big names who aren't that tough. So there's this kind of paradigm shift between the two polar opposites of, you know, like a guy like Conor McGregor, his, I would say his name is bigger than his fight skills, but his fight skills are way up there, but his name is way bigger just because he's such a big superstar. But then he got a guy like myself who, my fight skills much, much supersede my name status in the game because

I've been outside the UFC for so long. And that's not me comparing my skill against Conor. I think we match up well together, whatever, but Conor or, you know, Poirier and Ferguson were both offered me, offered to fight me October 24th. They both turned it down for their different reasons and, you know, some, you know, some, they both brought up money or they both brought up, don't, whether it's timeline or maybe they wanted to fight each other, they talked about, you know, standing up for each other. And then, and then Poirier got the Conor fight or whatever. So it was all an interesting thing. But I think I'm a dark horse of the division because people don't really want to fight me because there's not a lot of upside to fighting me,

you know, you could fight it, you could fight another guy in the top 10 who's in the UFC, who is a household name, like, I'll say Charles, Charles Oliveira, he's on a long, long fight gangster. Yeah, he's good. He's got some wins. He's been in the UFC for a long time. Would you fight him? I would fight anybody, but when I already have the opportunity to fight a top five guy, I've been told I was going to get a top five guy right away, Poirier or Ferguson. Like, why would I ever think about, and that was the problem too. Right. The Khabib's training partner, freaking, everybody wanted me to fight him because his, because his opponent, Rafael Dosanios, got COVID and fell off the card. So everybody was like, Oh, you should fight him.

I'm like, why am I going to fight number 12 when I already basically have a name on a contract that's in the top five? I'm going to get a top five guy right away. I'm sorry if that makes people feel a certain way. I'm sorry if the fans think that I'm entitled or I'm sorry if the fans think that I, you know, don't deserve it. Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. It's the UFC's decision. Let me step into the cage. Let me freaking figure it out then whipped or let me prove to you guys that I deserve to be in top five. Either way, we'll know pretty soon. Man, a lot of you just got to wait to get in there every time, huh? Yeah. Well, that's the problem. That's the problem with mixed, mixed martial arts man is wrestling was great because if I lost, it was 48 hours, 72 hours,

three, four days until I got to get back into the wind column and get a win. If I want it, you know, if I, if I had the opportunity, mixed martial arts, man, if I lose, it takes me four, five, six months to get a win. And that's why that time between fights and that's why I, I went into a hole, man. I lost, I lost three fights in a row, 688 days without a win. Back when I first, I've lost my first fight ever to Eddie Alvarez, very close razor, razor thin split decision, lost my next two fights because I just wasn't prepared mentally to lose a. And then when I did lose, it took me so long to get in, to get to my next competition that I self-sabotized or, or didn't build myself up enough and told myself the lies

that I wasn't as good as I thought I was. My doubters were correct and all that kind of stuff. Damn, what a journey to come back from because that's when that's your first fight. The first fight that, first fight that I lost and then it was just like, man, I can't, can't, I'm not who I thought I was. They were right. The naysayers were right. The media who didn't believe in me was right, you know, and then I just lost three fights. And that, you know, someday when I write a book, it'll be called 688 days to talk about, you know. And Eddie Alvarez is a gangster. Is there a guy, God, he's such a, dude, when you're watching, he reminds me like the greatest guy to like, I don't know what he

reminds me of. Is there a guy out there when you're fighting them, when they, who's the craziest look in the eye person you've ever seen? And it doesn't have nothing to do with their fighting skills or anything, but who have you ever gotten in the ring with? And you're like, Jesus Christ, this guy is missing a little bit of something. For me, I think there's this guy named Dave Rickles who I fought twice, who's, he had a, he has a really pretty good career. He actually went over to bare knuckle, bare knuckle fighting. So that'll show you. Wow. He's, you know, you got to kind of have a screw loose to go to that place and fight bare knuckle, right? But man, he was just, he had this look in his eyes. He was a little nuts. He was a little crazy. He was, he's the kind

of guy who would carry like he was caveman was his, his, his name. So he'd wear a Barney Rubble Flintstones thing to carry a big old club like Barney Flintstone. One time they, they wheeled him out in a coffin. He opened himself up, pulled himself out of the coffin and got out of there. He was a true showman, but he was also kind of a little bit nuts, you know, he was, he was probably one of the craziest guys I ever fought. Is there more, are you noticing over the time more of that wrestling kind of flair get into fighting as well? Or is it gotten less as your career has gotten into bigger fights and, you know, more higher purse fights and stuff and you, you know, just more professional. Is there more

of that at a lower level? Or do you think there's just more of that coming into the sport everywhere? I think, I think there was a, I think there was the Conor McGregor, Conor McGregor era that said, okay, I need a trash talk. I need Gucci sunglasses. I need Gucci flip flops. I need a real or fake good looking watch. I don't care if it's fake. I just want people to think I got money. I got to talk. I got to wear, wear certain things. I think Conor came in and it worked for Conor. Conor McGregor is an anomaly. He is great on the mic. He is well read. He's well, well rehearsed. You're crazy if you don't think that a lot of the stuff Conor has said on this microphone wasn't rehearsed in the back in, you know, in, in, in his room before he's going to bed at night.

He's just rehearsing different things. And so I think when I first got into the sport, there was almost none of it. Then Conor came in. I think a lot of people started, you know, trying to look high class, nice cars and this, that and the other thing, which that's also just Instagram models. There's so many of them out there. So we're also in the age of Instagram, Instagram. But I also think the tide is now shifting towards the respectful, honorable warriors. I mean, look at our division. I mean, like Poirier is one of the most respectable guys ever. Conor punched a guy, punched an old man in an Irish whiskey bar and then like his next fight was like he apologized and he had his hair slicked back, beat up Cowboy Saroni, but it was a nice he, he's trying to play the respectable

card realize and like, man, I don't want to keep carrying around this heaviness. It's, it's a lot of heaviness to have a lot of animosity in your life. You know, man, like you can have certain spats with people. Like if you're not on good terms with people, man, like you don't need enemies in life. It sucks. Just so for anybody who's listening right now, if you got toxic people in your life, now imagine taking that and having a toxic relationship between you and the guy that you're fighting. How, how would you perform when you have that? Some people do well with it. Some people do really bad with it. I personally do really bad with it. Bellator tried to build up this big animosity thing between me and pit bull. And I'm not saying I lost because

of it, but I didn't feel myself going into that fight. You know, so to answer your question, I think the sport is moving towards the more respectable. And I'll tell you right now, had a conversation with Dana White on Fight Island. He told me, Hey kid, to keep doing exactly what you're doing, we're getting a ton of great feedback from the UFC staff, from the UFC fans, from all the social media pages, from all the content, all the stuff, like people, you are resonating with the fan base, with the audience. And I'm the kind of guy where I'm just going to be respectful. I'm going to have honor in the sport, integrity in my life, high character, high reputation. And it's always worked out well for me. Pretty, you know,

could I have sold some more tickets and made some more money by, you know, custom spitting, fighting a little bit more, maybe, but I wouldn't have felt better, wouldn't have felt good doing it. Exactly. Exactly. Maybe not. Let's get this question right here, man. It might be about to finish up. What do we have here, Riley? What's up, Theo? What's up, Michael? This is Quincy coming out from the great state of Texas. My question for Michael Chandler being just lay out for me what your dream career in the UFC is. When a lot of guys get here, they think, you know, Hey, I want the money fights, you know, I want to do the Connor gig, or, you know, I just want to chase glory. I just want a legacy. I want a name, you know, I want to know that championship. So

just lay out what's your ideal career with the UFC and where do you see it going? gang, gang, bro. Yeah, because that belt's back in play now, man. It is. That's a good question, man, because that's, it's good because it's, it's like, what's, what's the philosophy of, of why I'd made the decision? You know, just, just to give a little context, I left, I left the relative, the relative surety of easier fights and good money in Bellator, good contract in Bellator, comfortability of being the big fish little pond and being kind of the poster boy for an organization to essentially come over to the UFC, ask to get thrown to the sharks thrown to the wolves right away and see what happens. So to answer that question, I think a guy like Gachie or Tony Ferguson

fighting and showing the fans who I am when when that fight fight the way exactly the way that I fight proved to the fans okay this guy's here to stay this guy's a legit contender for the lightweight belt and then fight for the belt whether it's Habib or whether it's Conor Poirier whether it's whether I'm the number one contender after beating one of those guys and then Conor Poirier is the number one contender we fight for the title sometime middle of 2021 and then and then after that just defend the belt and get the big fights because I think and a crown they should put a crown on you guys at some point man crown would be cool you know or like a medal you know like an Olympic gold medal you know the crown would be crown would be cool but keep going sorry oh no

but then you know get a crown hopefully and then and then I guess you defend the belt a few times defend the belt a few times and then for me I don't say get the big fights just for the money but you get the big fights because that's how you get the attention you know it's like the it's like the Gary V approach of capturing as much attention as possible if you don't have people's attention or you can't get people's attention they can't they won't pay attention to you and they won't you know life is all about who knows you who trusts you and then who's going to to buy what you're selling not just money wise not just buying products but buy what you're selling like what kind of motivation are you selling people what kind of character are you selling people what

kind of what kind of theos are you are you selling to the people so that you can reach the masses and for me it's all about touching as many people as I possibly can through this platform that I've been given touching every walk of life every corner of the globe hopefully and so winning the world title and then getting big fights either defending the belt or you know BMF belt or the big you know the big fights with the big name guys to get as much attention and eyeballs on me not for the you know not for the ego of it but for the platform of it yeah that platform yeah that's a good point you know once people know you then you can do stuff with it yeah I mean that's and that's really what it is because it's it's a catch 22 and it's like oh he just did that for attention and

it's like yeah as long as you don't ever sacrifice your morals or your character it's okay to do things for attention you know like I came over the UFC essentially for attention you know I came over to the UFC for competition competition and attention those are two things that I get from the UFC that I'm that I couldn't not that I wasn't getting a bellator but I get more in the UFC so it's okay to want more attention especially if you've done things to earn it you know was there a time previously you were gonna come to the UFC and it didn't work out or was there how long is this I mean how long is this whole combo going on is it one of those ongoing conversations for like a decade what is it like so it's one of those deals where I never actually became a free agent

there was some reports out there that Chandler's a free agent he's you know he's gonna you know but I ever actually you know two years ago and four years ago was on the last fight on my contract ended up resigning with Bellator with the one fight left on my contract so I was never a free agent until August of 2020 and it just seemed like the right time this time back then because it's also it also depended on what the UFC lightweight division looked like too you know two years ago the landscape looked a lot different you had Habiba's the champion you had Connor off doing 100 million dollar fights with Floyd Mayweather he could come back leapfrog me whenever you had Poirier coming in you one or one of those guys had an interim title two years ago it was either

Tony or it wasn't Poirier because I think Poirier was after that but maybe it was Tony I think Tony had an interim title Habib had the title Habib wasn't coming back necessarily so it was just a weird time it was a weird time for me to come in now it exactly what we thought now it's perfect two years later I'm coming in at this time which couldn't have been even more so two years ago and I said this to Dana when I spoke to him I said listen two years ago four years ago I wouldn't have been the guy that you needed to be to come in and be the champion and be the superstar this division and I truly believe that I'm going to be that I don't say that in a cocky I don't say that in a cocky way I just believe like I want you gotta believe it I just believe that

that's that's what's going to happen and and maybe there's gonna be some people that laugh at me I fall flat on my face and that's fine but at least I find out you know that's how I feel in my heart right now and you can't you can't knock a man for how he feels in his heart you know a man who hitches his dream to a star that's the only way you can go out and create create impact in your life and do amazing things so that's what I'm doing and man it's been uh it's been cool but I never became a free agent until just this year and it just never seemed like the right time to become a free agent until this year damn so it worked out perfect well I'm inspired how do you feel Riley I loved every minute of it come on Riley I like that man yeah you're great thanks man

didn't make you feel better about the girl yeah hey there are so many fish in the sea man true true I didn't meet my wife until I was like 27 years old yeah where'd you meet her at dude that's a funny story crazy story actually this tooth right here chipped it like broke it in half and in college my buddy Justin Cole jumped off the side of the pool jumped on me and I bit it down broke it but I told them that I did it in wrestling so they sent me to this mazu casual move that I know they sent it to my yeah come on dude they sent it to them to send me to the mazu dentist the guy who did all the dentist stuff his name was Kent Willett I knew who he was because he was a bible study leader of my bible study leader he had a great

great uh reputation in town and I was looking at these pictures of him I'm like man he's just who's this cute little brunette girl and all these family pictures I mean there must be his daughter and he's awesome I like him and I don't even know him if she's half as good as she must be by being his daughter he must you know she must be awesome he fixes my tooth I don't say anything but I start looking her up on Facebook and just freaking fall in love with her yeah I've been there before yeah right and then a couple couple weeks later I joined a bible study and they start talking about this Brie Willett girl and that was her name Brie Willett I'm like man that's that's that freaking girl man like I love that girl and and now I hear them talking I'm just like kind of listening like oh so

she goes to school here like what is she cool what's it what path does she take to walk yeah exactly yeah no well she wasn't in the town she was she was out of town you know she was a couple hours away in Indiana but luckily through Facebook I think I firmly requested her she said yes because I had I had some friends that she respected and were like well if he's friends with these guys he must be all right ends up being five years later till I finally freaking send her a Facebook message I'm like hey how are things like active kind of active like I knew her she you know she uh she you know responded we talked for a couple months she said hey I'm doing residencies or I'm applying for residencies I'm getting off here here's my email so we emailed back and forth for almost two years

she would she would wait like four five six months to respond to me I would email her and she waited freaking three months to respond to me and I'd email her right away she'd wait two months to respond to me you're like we're getting closer just dangled me for two years you know and then finally I wore her down enough she got coffee with me and then we fell in love right there January 24th 2013 and call this coffee in Columbia Missouri and you met her the other night yeah beautiful lady man we had a nice time I came over for the um just to watch some of the election and yeah it was a nice time man yeah it's fun man and then uh took some to go play I wish I'd have taken a bigger one yeah dude you should have man we still got like six pounds of brisket

I was thinking I was like oh it's somebody's like you're gonna take it to go play I'm like yes they only got three people living here yeah you can't eat all of this two adults at a four year old exactly I was going out of town yeah dude I'm glad you took some that was fun if you want something that was fun man um yeah that's like my that must yeah my whole thing is like I'll y'all send girls like DMs I'd be like hey did I see you at the grocery and and then they were like I live in Moscow and I'm like oh well yeah I was there yeah my bad my bad but I send those I must have been all my friends FaceTime he was walking through the grocery I saw you but in the background his name is Vladimir yeah yeah that's fucking great Vladimir um that's all I got Riley

any question you want me to ask for you all right Michael Chandler man dude it's it's a pleasure to watch your ride man and thank you so much for coming and joining us today man man thanks for having me it's fun yeah now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone oh but when I reach that ground I'll share this piece of mind I found I can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking brake and let myself on one shine that light on me I sit and tell you my story shine on me and I will find a song I will sing it just