June 8, 2010 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:19:08
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Boom, and we're live. | ||
| Kevin Lee. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| This is about as fresh off of a fight as you can get, man. | ||
| Yeah, just about. | ||
| Touching down. | ||
| Yeah, barely slept. | ||
| Yeah, right? | ||
| It must have been a crazy... | ||
| First of all, after a fight, you're probably so wired and can't believe it's over. | ||
| What is it like? | ||
| It takes you a minute for it to hit you, really. | ||
| I didn't sleep at all after the fight. | ||
| I just... | ||
| I laid there for a little bit, mind kind of racing. | ||
| Didn't really settle down. | ||
| I just ended up just getting up, getting some breakfast, and then right on the plane over here. | ||
| Didn't sleep all night on the plane. | ||
| Came over here, 3 a.m. | ||
| I've been up all morning. | ||
| But what are you, like 25? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I keep going. | ||
| Rockstar lifestyle, baby. | ||
| I gotta live it. | ||
| 25, you can do that for like two days in a row before it really starts to settle in. | ||
| Yeah, no, I'll be good for a minute. | ||
| I mean, besides getting kicked in the head, I'm all good other than that. | ||
| Dude, first of all, it was a very, very, very impressive performance. | ||
| I mean, Edson Barboza is no fucking joke and notoriously difficult to take down. | ||
| Even Khabib struggled getting him down the early parts of the first round, but you got him down quick. | ||
| Yeah, I think a lot of people underestimate that, especially how technical my wrestling can get. | ||
| I just feel like... | ||
| Edson was really strong. | ||
| He was probably the strongest guy that I've ever faced physically... | ||
| His body moved a little bit different. | ||
| Technically, I just had the aspect there. | ||
| When you add those two things up, I'm equally as strong. | ||
| I'm just going to blow him off the water. | ||
| He's just a bundle of fast twitch muscle fiber, man. | ||
| People, they'll see the Khabib fight and they'll see this fight with you. | ||
| They might not understand how good that guy really is. | ||
| He's very, very good. | ||
| He's a beast and he's going to come back and he's going to knock some people out. | ||
| He's only going to get better from here, I think. | ||
| It's just the styles make the fights too. | ||
| And me, I feel like I can fight any style. | ||
| That was my number one goal when I got into this sport, just to be the most well-rounded, complete fighter that there is. | ||
| And I feel like I can take advantage of some of his things that he's not getting good at. | ||
| But he's going to get better at them. | ||
| He's going to be back. | ||
| He's a beast. | ||
| Well, that focus and that mindset of being well-rounded was very obvious in that fight. | ||
| I was very impressed by the fact you fight just as good southpaw as you do orthodox. | ||
| You switch up easily. | ||
| I've only been going southpaw for maybe the past year, year and a half or so, and just kind of getting a filler for it down, but I feel like that could be one of the... | ||
| When you listen to a lot of the great fighters in the past, they talk about a right-handed southpaw. | ||
| There's so many advantages that can be there. | ||
| And it's just always great to be able to switch up and change time, especially when you've got a guy that's trying to time you like Edson. | ||
| Yeah, they say that if you work on the opposite side, it actually makes the other side better. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It makes it a little bit easier when you switch back. | ||
| And I've noticed that. | ||
| I mean, there's still some kinks and twists that I want to kind of get out of there. | ||
| You know, you see, I study a lot of people. | ||
| I study a lot of switch fighters, especially in MMA. Recently, I want to say about the last two years, guys have been doing it more often. | ||
| But some guys do it better than others. | ||
| I try and get the perfect mix, you know? | ||
| Well, some guys do it, but there's a twist, right? | ||
| Like, Wonderboy does it, but when Wonderboy does it, you know that the front leg is coming. | ||
| He can fight any style. | ||
| I mean, he can fight left or right, but when he switches, when he goes right, you know that front leg side kick's coming, that front leg roundhouse kick is coming, and then when he stands orthodox, he's much more likely to throw a punch or maybe even spin. | ||
| He mixes it up, but he's limited, maybe, in the way he attacks. | ||
| The blending of it, I think. | ||
| Wonderboy is one of those guys that his switches are really... | ||
| You can see them coming. | ||
| He makes them really pronounced. | ||
| They're big switches. | ||
| And you know the attacks that are coming. | ||
| There are certain guys like TJ Dillashaw who is great at mixing it up completely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Where I feel like he doesn't sit down on his punches too much or, you know, he gets in spots where he can get clipped in between those with your feet off the ground. | ||
| So I try to find the happy medium between those two, switching up too much and being able to make those hard switches too. | ||
| Well, TJ's really been doing that style for just like three or four years now since he's been with Bang. | ||
| Maybe it was about... | ||
| I want to say three years, four years. | ||
| Yeah, probably. | ||
| It takes some time to get used to it. | ||
| Get used to the timing and everything. | ||
| And that's one of the things with me. | ||
| I try and be the most consistent guy that there is out there. | ||
| So the more consistently I'm getting in there, the more I'm seeing things coming. | ||
| I'm reading the angles and getting a lot of different looks, a lot of different bodies being thrown at me. | ||
| So all that adds up to experience. | ||
| And it's only going to get better from there. | ||
| Yeah, it's also one of those things. | ||
| When you're 25 years old, you still are, like, realistically five years away from your athletic prime. | ||
| Yeah, I keep that in the back of my mind sometimes because, you know, you obviously don't want to overwork the body too much. | ||
| You don't want to burn out. | ||
| But I think it's just staying consistent and staying healthy. | ||
| As long as I'm healthy through it, you know, I got through that fight. | ||
| No serious damages at all. | ||
| And that's the most important thing is just staying healthy when I'm young. | ||
| And then, you know, tailing back when I'm starting to get more damages or more injuries. | ||
| But I do a great job of keeping my body healthy, I think, more than anything. | ||
| What do you, like, when you're in, I know Robert Foles was your coach for quite a long time. | ||
| And we both miss him. | ||
| I'm sure you were very close with him. | ||
| He was such a great guy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Was he the guy that, like, did he sort of map out your training program when you were in camp? | ||
| You know, I had, we kind of structured it, or at least I try to structure it like a full team aspect. | ||
| You know, Rob was kind of like, I think of it like a race car. | ||
| You know, I'm the race car itself, but Rob was like the head driver. | ||
| You know, Rob was telling me where to go, what to do. | ||
| Dewey was kind of like my horsepower. | ||
| Dewey Cooper? | ||
| Yeah, Dewey Cooper. | ||
| I mean, phenomenal striking coach, if you ever. | ||
| Fantastic fighter. | ||
| With him, he was a smaller heavyweight, but he would fight giant guys like Peter Arts. | ||
| And to do that, you look at him, he's only about 220, 6'1", maybe. | ||
| He's fighting 6'7", 300-pound guys. | ||
| So he has to be extra technical in there, not rely on his speed and power. | ||
| That's why I think he makes such a great coach, and he pushes me through it. | ||
| But I had another guy I've been working with, Corey Goodwin, for the last four or five years since I've been on Vegas. | ||
| He's kind of like the mechanic. | ||
| He keeps my body fresh and going. | ||
| Is he your strength and conditioning guy? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We call it that, but what we do is a lot different than strength and conditioning. | ||
| I don't lift any weights. | ||
| For real? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I haven't touched a weight since college. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| The only time I did was when I went over and I started working with the UFC PI guys a little bit. | ||
| They wanted me to touch weights. | ||
| It's just not a good fit for me. | ||
| Are you doing... | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Plyometrics? | ||
| Are you doing... | ||
| He'd have to explain it to you more. | ||
| You know, that's his... | ||
| He worked through EXO's for a long time, so he took a lot of their physiology and... | ||
| What is that? | ||
| EXO's. | ||
| What's EXO's? | ||
| I think they just signed a deal with the UFC too. | ||
| A lot of guys have been going over and they're a big strength and conditioning program. | ||
| They got a big facility down in Arizona, but they used to be based out of Vegas. | ||
| So he worked for them, where he gets a lot of his training philosophies and stuff from. | ||
| But it's not... | ||
| It's not any weight lifting. | ||
| Calisthenics, chin-ups, push-ups? | ||
| Yeah, a lot of calisthenics, a lot of movement. | ||
| We work a lot of the joints, especially, where he overextends my joints, he pushes them past the limit, and then we work out from there. | ||
| So it's not very heavy lifting. | ||
| It's maybe 15 pounds. | ||
| What do you mean by pushing them past the limit? | ||
| Like hyperextend it? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, no. | ||
| Like he pulls it almost like you get an armbar? | ||
| So, one of the things we do is he takes a band and he stretches it out so it really pulls my shoulder. | ||
| And I was telling you, I very rarely have shoulder problems. | ||
| And I think a large reason, he pulls it all the way out, kind of out the socket, and then we work it out from there, you know, to build strength from those little muscles. | ||
| Which I feel like is... | ||
| That's the part where I get my true strength from, you know? | ||
| I do that, a lot of yoga, a lot of, you know, a lot of things that just all the strength comes from within me, not lifting weights or anything. | ||
| How often are you doing yoga when you're in camp? | ||
| Two, three times. | ||
| I've only been doing it for like four or five months since the Tony fight. | ||
| It's been helping me a lot. | ||
| When I started doing it, guys were like, oh, what are you lifting or something? | ||
| I'm like, nah, just... | ||
| That shit's hard. | ||
| I'm like fucking just doing yoga. | ||
| Isn't it crazy how hard it is? | ||
| It sounds like you're just fucking off. | ||
| Like, yeah, I'm doing yoga. | ||
| Oh, you lazy bitch. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Stretching, touching your toes and shit? | ||
| Maybe for like the first two months, like I'd be like ashamed to tell people. | ||
| They're like, where are you going? | ||
| I'm like, you know, I'm going to this one class. | ||
| You know, we're going to be lifting a lot of weights and we're going to be grunting and shit. | ||
| Nah, I'm in there with like the fucking... | ||
| Housewives. | ||
| Housewives. | ||
| And they're killing me. | ||
| It's crazy, right? | ||
| They're killing me. | ||
| They're killing me. | ||
| I've gotten good now, though. | ||
| Do you do hot yoga? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Hot yoga. | ||
| I do a couple different vinyasa a little bit. | ||
| I try and dibble-dabble. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I've only been doing it for a couple months now. | |
| How do you structure your camp? | ||
| How much strength and conditioning are you doing? | ||
| How much skill work? | ||
| It kind of depends on the opponent too. | ||
| Generally, I'm doing three times a week of some type of grappling, whether that's wrestling or no-gi. | ||
| Then I only spar once a week at the end of the weeks. | ||
| We pick our sparring partners that we choose. | ||
| You know, we fly guys in or guys that are in town because I'm in Vegas. | ||
| All guys are always in and out. | ||
| But then, you know, I only do strength and conditioning maybe two times a week. | ||
| Not too much. | ||
| Now, when you say you spar once a week and you bring guys in, are you sparring hard or do you spar more technical? | ||
| When I'm in camp, maybe four or five good, but I go pretty hard. | ||
| And it ruins me sometimes because I run out of sparring partners and guys don't want to show up and all this. | ||
| But I ended up having to start paying guys. | ||
| Just come on, man. | ||
| Give me some work here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, we're trying to make some money. | ||
| Do you think that that's the way to go, like, for longevity? | ||
| There's the big debate, right? | ||
| Whether or not you should spar skill-wise and then save it up for the fight, or whether you should just fucking go to war. | ||
| I think you need that reaction time, you know, with a guy that's seriously throwing at you. | ||
| And, I mean, we're not trying to hurt each other, for sure. | ||
| Like, 80% maybe? | ||
| 70%? | ||
| Something like that? | ||
| We go pretty hard up until you obviously can see that there's an injury or somebody's hurt or you back down. | ||
| Even on some of my takedowns, I back down, obviously. | ||
| I'm not trying to knock the guy out, but I am trying to give him some good work. | ||
| I hope he does the same in return, but we pick smart guys that'll do it. | ||
| That's what it's about at that level. | ||
| When you've got two very high level guys going against each other, we can go hard and not injure. | ||
| If I'm going with a new guy or it's a newer team, I don't even try to fuck around with it. | ||
| Someone's trying to make a name off you. | ||
| Yeah, I don't fuck around with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's too much. | |
| I remember I ran into Vitor once and his hand was in a cast and he hadn't had a fight in a while. | ||
| I said, what happened? | ||
| He said, some new guy came into the gym and he's sparring with this new guy and this new guy's trying to kill him and he broke his hand on this dude's forehead. | ||
| And I was thinking, you're Vitor Belfort. | ||
| I mean, this is Vitor like... | ||
| I want to say, like, eight, nine years ago. | ||
| I was like, man, like, that's crazy. | ||
| But that's the kind of shit that happens, right? | ||
| And guys are very tough in the gym. | ||
| I mean, especially some of the new dudes. | ||
| Like, they're tougher than you think they would be. | ||
| They're coming out with, you know, new... | ||
| I think each generation has a new style, too, that you don't get used to. | ||
| And if it... | ||
| You know, if them boys would catch you, they'd be hungrier than you. | ||
| Well, you're seeing all these new guys that are coming up that can do everything. | ||
| You know, they have like Taekwondo skills, they got Muay Thai, they can wrestle, they do flying arm bars and shit. | ||
| There's just, kids are, because MMA is such a part of like the zeitgeist now, and everybody understands it, and kids know if you want to be a really tough fighter, it's not about boxing, it's about MMA. And so you're getting these wild-ass kids at a really young age practicing this shit on each other, learning it, going to gyms when they're 9, 10 years old. | ||
| By the time they're in high school, they're killers. | ||
| Yeah, and we have so many of them that come through Vegas especially. | ||
| And I think that's my favorite part about living there is the training partners and, like you said, the new kids. | ||
| Even though I'm only 25, I'm trying to see what they're doing that's coming up next. | ||
| That's smart. | ||
| Because they're going to come with something That you ain't seen before. | ||
| And there's some out there. | ||
| Like, even my younger brother. | ||
| My younger brother's just getting started in his MRA career. | ||
| He's only got five pro fights now. | ||
| Eight in total. | ||
| So, not that many fights, but some of the things that he do, I'm like, you know, let me learn from you a little bit. | ||
| Well, the Barboza fight, you got clipped, what was it, third round? | ||
| The beginning of the third round, you got clipped with that wheel kick? | ||
| That recovery was amazing, though, man. | ||
| That's an amazing recovery. | ||
| I mean, Barboza puts people out with that shit, and your legs completely gave out. | ||
| But... | ||
| Man, that's a weird moment, right? | ||
| Where like anything, if he wasn't near you, right? | ||
| Where you could grab ahold of him and take him down. | ||
| If he just stepped back a little bit, you know? | ||
| Interesting, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I was still there. | ||
| You know, I never went away. | ||
| And I think a lot of, even the way I moved, when somebody showed me that video after, I cracked up. | ||
| I was dying laughing. | ||
| Because when I'm in there, I don't know what happened, you know? | ||
| I see the video and I see my legs just go... | ||
| The remix that somebody did with the music? | ||
| There's a couple of them, bro. | ||
| They're pretty good, though. | ||
| I've been laughing along to them all morning. | ||
| Well, because you won, it's funny. | ||
| Yeah, it's funny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because you won, it's funny. | |
| But I think a lot of, you see, a lot of what I was, my focus going into this one was really on my footwork, my balance, you know, doing yoga. | ||
| I've been dancing, too, a little bit. | ||
| What kind of dancing? | ||
| Some ballet and salsa. | ||
| I've heard a lot of guys, look, Lomachenko, his dad had him enrolled in dance for four fucking years. | ||
| Traditional Russian dancing, and he credits that for his footwork. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I've only been doing it for a short amount of time, but still, I can tell right off the bat. | ||
| And I think a lot of what you saw there was that, you know? | ||
| When I looked at before, the only other fight I've ever got dropped in or hurt seriously was the Leonardo Santos fight. | ||
| And really, it was me dropping back on my ankle. | ||
| And I broke my ankle in that fight. | ||
| So when I tried to stand back up, it looked like I wobbled. | ||
| And that's why John McCarthy stepped in. | ||
| So a lot of what I focused on was the balance. | ||
| So when that equilibrium gave off, and you see, I saw four guys in front of me. | ||
| I'm just like, let me just keep my eyes on this motherfucker right here. | ||
| It's crazy because you think of how hard Barboza is usually to take down. | ||
| You just got... | ||
| It was very fortunate that he was right there for you to grab him because he was trying to move in for the kill. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's... | ||
| If you were his coach, you would have been screaming, get the fuck away from him, right? | ||
| Honestly, his coach was not doing him no favors during that fight. | ||
| I felt bad for the guy. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| What way? | ||
| They could have did him better. | ||
| I probably could have put him away in the second round. | ||
| But he was panicking. | ||
| And I could see it in him. | ||
| And his coaches caused him to panic a little bit more. | ||
| They just kept screaming at him the time. | ||
| Like, you only got two minutes to survive. | ||
| And I was like, let me not. | ||
| Barboza's a nice guy. | ||
| He really is. | ||
| And I didn't want to hurt him too bad. | ||
| Just two very similar fights for him in a row. | ||
| Two maulings in a row. | ||
| That's... | ||
| When you're that guy who wants to stand up, and you've got guys that are just constant pressure, constant pressure, people don't realize how much endurance it takes to move away, too. | ||
| Moving backwards, it's a lot more difficult to do. | ||
| Yeah, true. | ||
| I feel like everything kind of pushed. | ||
| It's about who controls the pace of the fight, and I feel like I did a good job of that. | ||
| You know, I thought even after I got wobbled with the kick in the third, I still came back. | ||
| You won the round. | ||
| Yeah, I tried to make it a point to finish standing. | ||
| Other than that moment, you won the round. | ||
| You know, and you hurt him bad in the second round, too, with a kick to the body. | ||
| You could see him cover up and tense, but you could see it. | ||
| It was a strong right kick to the body. | ||
| One of the reporters, he asked me, like, why was I standing at range with him? | ||
| And it's just like, I feel like I can do it all, you know? | ||
| And that's my true sense. | ||
| It's like, I can stand at range with, I mean, he's definitely the most explosive, dynamic, all those things that you want to say, the best kicker in the lightweight division. | ||
| And I can stand at range with him and kick just as well with him. | ||
| I can wrestle with the best wrestlers. | ||
| I can kick with the best kickboxers. | ||
| I can punch with the best boxers. | ||
| So why not test myself? | ||
| I'm not one of these guys who shy away from shit. | ||
| He's an interesting case because he's really primarily a kicker. | ||
| He will throw punches, but that's not his strong suit. | ||
| I mean, he's not a guy that just wants to, you know, just dig in and throw bombs. | ||
| Yeah, but he got some bombs, too! | ||
| I'm sure he's got some bombs, I'm sure! | ||
| He hit me with a monstrous left hook in the fifth round. | ||
| I was like, man, he's still there. | ||
| The kid never gave up. | ||
| He was taking a beating. | ||
| He hit me with a monstrous left hook. | ||
| So I gave him one back and busted his orbital up pretty good. | ||
| But he was still there to the very end. | ||
| He can box, too. | ||
| He's got some power in his hands. | ||
| Yeah, and the cut was a pretty nasty cut. | ||
| Pretty nasty cut over his right eye when they stopped the fight. | ||
| Were you shocked that they stopped it? | ||
| Nah, I thought it was the right call. | ||
| I think more coaches in MMA should definitely get in there a little bit sooner. | ||
| I think that's what some of my problem with his corner was, too. | ||
| You see some of these fights, and you can kind of tell when a guy just doesn't. | ||
| You know, it doesn't make sense to make him take more beats. | ||
| Somebody like Barbozic is explosive to the very, very end. | ||
| You have to give that to him. | ||
| That's the thing you never know, right? | ||
| I mean, if he connected with that left hook perfect and you went out, and then he's a hero. | ||
| Yeah, then, you know, I guess you look like the asshole, but, you know, I don't know. | ||
| It's a thin line to cross. | ||
| Yeah, it's a tough decision. | ||
| You don't want to be there when your guy's getting beaten up like that, and you have to make that call. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I mean, maybe I'm just speaking from because I'm not a coach yet. | ||
| Maybe, you know, my stance will change when I'm when I am a coach, but you know, or if I have a coach, but we'll see. | ||
| Yeah, it's different. | ||
| I mean, the same thing with referees. | ||
| And Keith Peterson did a great job in that fight. | ||
| He's a guy that doesn't get enough credit. | ||
| There's a few, like, you know, Herb Dean, I think, because John McCarthy's retired. | ||
| I think he's the gold standard. | ||
| Josh Rosenthal. | ||
| There's a bunch of really good guys. | ||
| But that's a tough call to decide when to stop. | ||
| I think even Yamasaki, you know, Yamasaki takes a lot of bullshit, especially from Dana don't like him at all. | ||
| He hate that motherfucker. | ||
| But he does a great job in there. | ||
| Even that fight where he let the girl take a lot of punches, a lot of damage, she was still moving. | ||
| She was still showing that she was in the fight. | ||
| I think you got to put that on her coaches and her trainers. | ||
| They know if she's really in there. | ||
| Some guys are just too tough for their own good, like Barboza. | ||
| Well, she was fighting Valentina Shevchenko. | ||
| She just shouldn't have been in there. | ||
| She just shouldn't have been in there. | ||
| It was her first UFC fight, and she's fighting a woman who's just a straight-up assassin. | ||
| Yeah, and it can't be on the ref. | ||
| You can't put it on the ref to know that, you know, or to make that call. | ||
| The ref has to be completely, you know, not objective at all. | ||
| I think it's got to put it on the coaches. | ||
| They should know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What weight do you walk around at? | |
| If I'm completely just kind of like bullshitting, doing whatever, I've gotten to as high as like 195. Now, when you're in training, like when you get, like say you're four weeks out, where are you at? | ||
| 85 usually. | ||
| 185? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, 85. So you're cutting a lot of weight, man. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, that's... | ||
| Do you see yourself ever moving to 70 or... | ||
| No, not 70 necessarily. | ||
| At that point, you're talking about a frame issue. | ||
| You've got guys that are 6'1". | ||
| It's a different body style. | ||
| I train with a lot of them, high-level welterweights too. | ||
| It's a different body style. | ||
| I'm more suited for 155. Some of the things that I've got to play around with, I think will keep happening in the upcoming months. | ||
| I didn't project that I would fight again until July or so, so a lot of the things that I was doing diet-wise was kind of getting to that, and they approached me with this Barboza fight maybe like eight weeks earlier than that, so I just had to do what I had to do. | ||
| So, is it a matter of just you didn't taper off quick enough, or you just came in too heavy before you started? | ||
| You know, it was just the timing-wise. | ||
| You missed it by one pound? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's something on that timing that I've really got to figure out, and that was the biggest problem with the Tony Ferguson fight. | ||
| You know, I can break it down for you. | ||
| So, usually, you know, I'm normally about 185. Through six weeks of diet, I can usually diet down to about 76, 77. That's where I'm optimal. | ||
| And then from there, I start the water cut. | ||
| So the week of the fight, the Tuesday, I'm 76. I save that all the way until I overload my body with water and flush out some of the sodium and the carbs and all that. | ||
| I save the rest of that up until the day before, and I try and cut as much as I can as... | ||
| Because I want to spend as little time dehydrated, that dehydrated as possible. | ||
| And I think that's some of the problem with having these early morning weigh-ins is the timing issue of it. | ||
| Because you wake up and then you have to start from the time you wake up rather than if it's at 4 o'clock in the afternoon like it used to be, you'd be able to do it all throughout the day. | ||
| Yeah, I can cut more reasonably through the morning. | ||
| So you feel like if you had more time, you would have been able to make it? | ||
| Oh, yeah, absolutely. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| So it's just a time thing. | ||
| See, I got confused. | ||
| When they were doing this early morning weigh-ins, I thought you had, like, from 8 a.m. | ||
| to 4 o'clock to make it. | ||
| That's what I thought. | ||
| I thought if you weigh in early, go ahead, weigh in early. | ||
| But they gave you the time. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I'm not really... | ||
| I don't really know the solution either. | ||
| You know, I don't think nobody really knows the solution to that problem, the time frame. | ||
| Because you are seeing a lot of guys miss weight because of that. | ||
| And I think that's one of the biggest problems. | ||
| Not only that, but guys are going to sleep completely dehydrated and sleeping through the night 20 pounds dehydrated. | ||
| That's a lot of water coming from your blood. | ||
| Your blood gets thicker. | ||
| Your heart rate slows down when you sleep. | ||
| I mean, you know, I try my best not to spend as much time dehydrated as possible. | ||
| So it's just a timing issue on that last one especially. | ||
| When you see guys like Dos Anjos that just can't do it anymore, and he goes up to 70 and he looks better than ever, what do you think about that? | ||
| It's always an option for me. | ||
| It would be an option now. | ||
| I would entertain the right fight at it, for sure. | ||
| It's just right now, at the state of it, they're doing this bullshit interim title, and Tyron's sitting right there. | ||
| It's not a lot of movement at the top right now. | ||
| So 155, just more fights interest me. | ||
| It's bigger challenges. | ||
| I think the guys are honestly better at 155, 170, maybe in the future, but it's got to be the right type of fight or something. | ||
| Yeah, well, there's so many good fighters now. | ||
| I mean, you go all across the board. | ||
| I mean, pretty much every weight class is strong now. | ||
| But yeah, I agree. | ||
| I think 55 is probably the strongest weight class right now. | ||
| Yeah, and it's so strong that you can make a 165 pound. | ||
| I mean, I really don't see what the holdup is on it. | ||
| Do a 65, do a 75. I agree. | ||
| Because we have so many guys that can bounce between those. | ||
| And you'll have a whole new top 15, a whole new champion, and they'll be just as strong as any of the two weight classes next to it. | ||
| I couldn't agree more. | ||
| I think it's very important that we spread it out better. | ||
| I think 10 pounds is reasonable. | ||
| You know, I mean, the way boxing has it, they just, you know, they have a 54, and then they have a 60. That seems a little ridiculous. | ||
| 47, and then they have a 54. I think you'd be better off with 10. Just straight up 10 pounds, that's reasonable. | ||
| But when you go from like 85 to 205, that shit's crazy. | ||
| Some big boys. | ||
| That's a big gap. | ||
| Even 55 to 70, because most guys, like a normal size guy is about my size, 185, 190 pounds. | ||
| That puts you in that middle. | ||
| You got guys like me with a lot of muscle where I'm not going to lose a lot of fat in between. | ||
| Even Even for this one, I was 177, but I was 4.5% body fat. | ||
| You know, I couldn't really lean. | ||
| You can't get too much more lean than that. | ||
| You were 4.5% body fat when you weighed in? | ||
| Yeah, before. | ||
| Well, I was 4.5% maybe two weeks before the fight, actually. | ||
| But are you getting calipers? | ||
| How are they testing them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are they dunking you in the water? | |
| No, over at the PI. They have special scales. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, that body thing? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So those scales aren't that good. | ||
| Here's the thing about those scales. | ||
| Those scales, when you hold on to those things, some of them are okay, but the best way, they say, is submerging you. | ||
| There's a submerged one, and there's another one that uses some sort of electricity thing, like you lie in a bed. | ||
| I think the Performance Institute has that, too. | ||
| They're explaining that shit to me. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, the full scanner. | ||
| Yeah, I've done that a few times. | ||
| But it's much quicker, much easier just to get on the scale. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It just sounds real low. | |
| 4.5% sounds usually low. | ||
| It does, but as long as it's still the same measurement, you know what I'm saying, as my last fight. | ||
| For the Tony fight, I was 5.5% on those measurements. | ||
| So as long as it's with the same calipers or whatever the fuck they're using, you know that you're basically on points. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I can compare it at least. | ||
| But again, I can't get that much leaner. | ||
| It's mostly just going to come out water. | ||
| If they add a 65, then I've got 10 more pounds of water that I don't have to cut out. | ||
| It would be fucking ridiculous. | ||
| How frustrating was it for you going into that Tony Ferguson fight with that staph infection? | ||
| Because that was a serious fight. | ||
| I didn't notice it at the weigh-ins, but then the moment you walked into the cage, it was funny, man, because they were telling DC, don't talk about it. | ||
| Because I was going, that's staff. | ||
| That is fucking staff. | ||
| And then they said to DC, don't talk about it. | ||
| He goes, yup, that looks like staff to me. | ||
| He just ignored him. | ||
| He's like, fuck you. | ||
| I'm telling you, that's staff, man. | ||
| I don't know why they didn't want anybody bringing it up. | ||
| Because it's an important point. | ||
| It's an unfortunate thing that happens during training sometimes. | ||
| Yeah, I kind of noticed it on that Sunday. | ||
| And then Tuesday we do the check-ins and everything. | ||
| And I had the girl, I'm like, can you put some makeup on it? | ||
| Because I didn't want... | ||
| You know, nobody to find out. | ||
| And even Tony, you know, if he would have saw it, he would have knew. | ||
| He knew I'd compromise, all that. | ||
| But yeah, it frustrated things. | ||
| It made things a lot more complicated. | ||
| It put me... | ||
| It made the weight cut terrible. | ||
| Just to go back to it, I mean, I'm cutting from 76 to 50. I have to be 55 for that fight. | ||
| And I try my best to skim it down in about 12 hours. | ||
| So I woke up at 5 a.m. | ||
| at about 162. And weigh-ins are between 9 and 11. And from 5 a.m. | ||
| till 8 a.m., I had only cut one pound. | ||
| Compared to in other cuts that have gone really well, I would normally cut about four or five pounds at that time. | ||
| But because I just was feeling good and I wasn't worried about it, and I was using the same temperature of water, I was using the same everything, but the staff made my body hold on to the water. | ||
| So when I went down and checked and saw that I was still like five pounds up with like two hours to go, they started like throwing boiling hot water on me to get, you know, Yeah, to get me sweating to get it off. | ||
| It was brutal. | ||
| For someone who doesn't, never experienced staph, explain what it does to your body. | ||
| How it makes you feel. | ||
| The next day, I just... | ||
| I felt so tired. | ||
| I never felt as tired in my life. | ||
| And it felt... | ||
| I felt so tired to the point where I tried to counteract it by getting myself as pumped as I can. | ||
| And, you know, you normally get there two hours before the fight. | ||
| When I walked into the arena that night, two hours before, I was in a sweat. | ||
| You know, my body was like full of adrenaline. | ||
| So you weren't taking any medication? | ||
| You weren't going on antibiotics? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You figured... | |
| Did you have to decide whether you should take antibiotics, and then you know that compromises your endurance for sure, or just let your body fight it off? | ||
| I had it before, so I had been on the antibiotics, and they just make me feel terrible. | ||
| If you've ever been through it, I mean, it's a terrible feeling. | ||
| So I just was like, you know what, I think I can just push through it. | ||
| And I'm young, and I was like, you know what, fuck it, let's just go. | ||
| Did you try any natural remedies, like tea tree oil or anything like that? | ||
| It wasn't a whole lot I could take because I also got to cut the weight still. | ||
| There's some topical stuff. | ||
| One of the things they say that works really well topical, believe it or not, is minced garlic. | ||
| Garlic apparently has a tremendous effect on staph infections. | ||
| I was swallowing whole cloves of ginger. | ||
| I would take ginger, I would chop it up, and I would swallow it to see if that would do something. | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| Yeah, it's hard. | ||
| Garlic has some real strong antibacterial properties. | ||
| And one of the people that have been on the podcast many times, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, said she had dealt with some persistent staph infection. | ||
| And she had like a hole in her skin. | ||
| And what she did was she took garlic and packed it into that hole and fucking killed it. | ||
| I mean, genius. | ||
| I wish I would have known that before. | ||
| I just kind of just fought through it. | ||
| I was like, fuck it. | ||
| I'm just going. | ||
| Defense Soap makes some really good stuff for that, too. | ||
| They make these essential oils. | ||
| It's tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil. | ||
| And you put it on like right where they have an injury. | ||
| Where were you in October? | ||
| I would've been there for you, brother. | ||
| I would've been there for you. | ||
| Anybody else that has that staph, anytime you have any sort of ringworm or staph or anything, there's some natural stuff, not like some bullshit homeopathic nonsense, but some actual, real, natural stuff that can help you. | ||
| And Defense Soap specializes in that because Guy Sacco, the guy who owns the company, he coaches wrestling and deals with kids that always have ringworm and staph infections. | ||
| So he came out with these soaps, these natural soaps. | ||
| That are just designed for grapplers. | ||
| That's why it's called defense soap. | ||
| And then I'll have them send you some. | ||
| And then the essential oils and balms and stuff like ointments for scratches and shit like that so they don't get infected. | ||
| That's, you know, gyms, you're always getting infected. | ||
| Yeah, and that was one of the biggest focuses of this camp. | ||
| It's like, make sure I stay healthy. | ||
| Because if you don't have your health, you don't have nothing. | ||
| And that was what it was at that Tony fight. | ||
| And it's just... | ||
| It was such a big event, and it was my first real big event, too, that I just wanted it all just to go right in and go over. | ||
| But it ended up being just a lot on my body. | ||
| The staff, originally, I think it came from mental stress. | ||
| It was so many stresses going on. | ||
| It's a lot of pressure. | ||
| Yeah, and you look at the three biggest stressors. | ||
| I was going through a divorce, and I had just moved into a house. | ||
| You look at those in a normal day-to-day Life. | ||
| Those are the two biggest stressors you can have. | ||
| Then to add on fighting for a world title in six weeks. | ||
| So I'm just like, let's fucking go. | ||
| I wasn't expecting to... | ||
| I was thinking maybe they was going to give me Tony, but maybe in December in Detroit or something like that. | ||
| But it was like six weeks. | ||
| I was like, all right, well, fuck. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| They were thinking about doing you in Detroit, right? | ||
| That was the talk. | ||
| And you were requesting a big fight in Detroit. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's where every year I kind of plan out my year and I got my vision in my head. | ||
| I got to call them audibles in there. | ||
| That was one of them. | ||
| But yeah, it ended up putting a little bit too much stress on me all at once and I took on a lot for that one. | ||
| You did, but I'll tell you what, man. | ||
| When you took him down and mounted him in the first round, I was like, holy shit, because I know how good Tony is on the ground. | ||
| You know, it's interesting because you look at someone when they fight, and this is one of the things that I've been saying about Khabib, because it's so hard, because he's doing what people do, right? | ||
| He's taking people down, he's mounting them, grounding them, pounding them. | ||
| But he's doing it to people that other people can't do it to, and he's doing it in a way that it's like, wow, how good is this motherfucker? | ||
| Like, when he was mauling Michael Johnson, I was like, how fucking good is he? | ||
| Because this is crazy. | ||
| Like, he's, in that moment, several levels better than anybody Michael had fought before on the ground. | ||
| And when I'm seeing you, first of all, see the Chiesa fight. | ||
| And right to this day, I'm like, Jesus fucking Christ, just let him go out. | ||
| Let him go out, and we would have known. | ||
| That minor controversy from that moment, you got a fully locked in, rear naked choke, and he's still conscious. | ||
| Let him go out. | ||
| If he doesn't want to tap, let him go out. | ||
| He was going lit. | ||
| Maybe, but let him go out. | ||
| But, you know, the defense isn't, you can't, you can't. | ||
| Some guys can. | ||
| I know what you're saying, but I know Hickson can. | ||
| Yeah, but the thing is, the ref, you can't put that on the ref, you know? | ||
| It's defend yourself intelligently. | ||
| Was that Mario? | ||
| Yeah, it was Mario. | ||
| But it's defend yourself intelligently at all times. | ||
| You can't say I'm blocking punches with my face until the guy gets tired. | ||
| You can't say I'm just going to try and sleep in this choke until the guy gets tired of me. | ||
| What he said was he was trying to concentrate on his neck and just completely tense up his neck and try to push blood through. | ||
| I've seen guys do that. | ||
| I feel you, but... | ||
| But only to a point. | ||
| Only to a point, right? | ||
| And then you go to sleep. | ||
| Let him go to sleep. | ||
| Yeah, I'm with you. | ||
| He could have let him go to sleep. | ||
| But I think as soon as Mario saw that his hands went from fighting the hands to doing this, Mario stopped it. | ||
| And I thought it was a good stoppage. | ||
| It's not a bad stoppage. | ||
| It's not a bad stoppage, but it was controversial. | ||
| You can call it odd things. | ||
| Controversial is always good. | ||
| I said that right after. | ||
| Keep it up. | ||
| Keep it going. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| It got you to talk about it. | ||
| Everybody would talk about it. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| Because it's an undercard fight, but it became bigger even than a lot of the other fights on the card because of that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, we headlined that event. | ||
| It wasn't? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought that was on a pay-per-view. | |
| That's right. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| He's doing my thing out there with that one. | ||
| But that fight was really like a top contender fight. | ||
| I mean, Chiesa had been on a roll. | ||
| He's very strong on the ground, which is one of the reasons why it was so impressive that you took his back and choked him like that. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think I have a different style than a lot of people can see. | ||
| You know, you go back to Khabib, and his style is good. | ||
| It's obviously very good, but I can see a lot of holes in it. | ||
| And I saw those holes many years ago. | ||
| I've been calling him Khabib for years. | ||
| I've been wanting to fight him just because people got those questions. | ||
| I got those questions, too. | ||
| So I'm like, let's see what this motherfucker got. | ||
| Because I see it. | ||
| I see them holes. | ||
| You know, I don't really focus on too much of the good. | ||
| I'm like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
What holes? | |
| That boy number. | ||
| I'm telling you, Joe. | ||
| What are the holes? | ||
| What do you see? | ||
| You know, even on a lot of his takedowns, he misses a lot of them. | ||
| You know, he's very square. | ||
| He kind of just bum rushes. | ||
| You know, people were talking about the Barboza fight before, and they're like, are you looking at that fighter and you're going to try and build off that one? | ||
| I'm like... | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he did okay. | ||
| The fight was good. | ||
| He beat the hell out of Barboza, but I saw the holes in it. | ||
| You know, he's just running square forward at him. | ||
| You know, he got hit with a lot of shots. | ||
| It's terrifying for people on the outside watching him because the way he just came forward on Barboza was like he was indestructible. | ||
| It didn't matter. | ||
| I'm just going to get you. | ||
| It's just a matter of time. | ||
| Keep throwing your kicks. | ||
| I'm going to get you. | ||
| I'm going to get you. | ||
| Ooh, I got you. | ||
| You got those guys, but the body gives up. | ||
| You know, Justin Gaethje is the same way. | ||
| The body will give up. | ||
| You can't keep putting your body on the line like that. | ||
| I mean, if he wants to run at me square like that, I'm getting paid. | ||
| I'm getting paid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry. | |
| I love I love watching him fight, but part of me is like, Jesus, man. | ||
| If he mixed what he can do, because he's one of the very best at leg kicks and close, that dude would be in the middle of a combination, like chest to chest with you, and then somehow or another, he whips a leg kick straight down on your leg. | ||
| I mean, he's nasty with that. | ||
| He's got a couple things that he does real good. | ||
| I've been studying Genji too. | ||
| He's just hard-headed. | ||
| He don't give a fuck. | ||
| Yeah, he'll just take it and just walk right into it. | ||
| But it seems like when you look at all the skills that he has, that would be better represented with some movement and some footwork and some other things. | ||
| Yeah, especially with a guy like Trevor Whitman in his corner. | ||
| You know, Trevor's a great, great coach. | ||
| Look what he did to Rose. | ||
| I mean, yeah. | ||
| I think their styles are very opposite. | ||
| You know, he should probably listen to them a little bit more. | ||
| It's even one of the things with me and Robert Follis. | ||
| You know, I had been with Robert. | ||
| Robert was pretty much the only reason why I moved to Vegas. | ||
| Because he... | ||
| There's a weird bond between a fighter and a coach. | ||
| And he just got me more than any other coach before or since Will. | ||
| We were very different, but he just understood me as an athlete a little bit more. | ||
| And even some of the things that he would tell me, I wouldn't listen to it. | ||
| He'd be like... | ||
| He tried to tell me to stay smart and not brawl. | ||
| At the end of the day, Joe, I'm like, fuck this. | ||
| I'm going to fight. | ||
| I'm going to bite down on my mouthpiece. | ||
| He tried to get me to be smarter. | ||
| And just some of the things that he would say to me resonated with me more than anybody else. | ||
| So... | ||
| I think now that he's gone, I've put what he said, it's still in my head, and I try and follow it even more now. | ||
| And I wish somebody like Gagey wouldn't listen to Trevor. | ||
| Because you know Whitman is telling him what to do, the right things to do. | ||
| He should probably listen to him. | ||
| Well, I think Trevor just tries to compliment your style, and Gagey's style is just savage. | ||
| He's just... | ||
| We're going to war. | ||
| We're going to war. | ||
| Every time we're going to war. | ||
| I get it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fun to watch. | |
| I think you learn from somebody else. | ||
| I think everybody has what they do. | ||
| Like I said, I try and create a strong team around me where everybody has what they do, and I'm just going to try and listen to them. | ||
| Even more so now. | ||
| Now that I understand that a little bit more as I'm getting older and, you know, going through life, too, with it, like I said, with Rob. | ||
| You know, one of the reporters there, he asked me, he was like, we seen you in there talking, and they thought I was talking to Barboza, but I was really just talking to myself. | ||
| Like, I was saying things that he would say or... | ||
| That Robert would say. | ||
| Yeah, that Robert would say. | ||
| And I'm saying them to myself. | ||
| And I guess my mouth was moving. | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| I thought it was in my head the whole time. | ||
| But I guess some of the reporters could see it. | ||
| But I really tried to make that a focus. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| So do you do that in sparring too? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I usually try and... | ||
| Did you realize you were doing it until they brought it up? | ||
| I didn't realize. | ||
| No, because when he asked me that, it kind of caught me off guard. | ||
| Because I remember in the fight, I'm very cerebral. | ||
| I remember everything about it. | ||
| But I remember I was going to say something to Barboza, too. | ||
| You know, I'm talking my shit. | ||
| I do it in fights from time to time. | ||
| But I didn't because he was a nice guy. | ||
| I didn't realize that I was talking to myself, too. | ||
| In it, even. | ||
| So you were just kind of going through the things that you wanted to focus on in the fight while it was happening? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you remember what you were saying? | |
| Even the kick, the kick that he landed, if you see a microsecond before that, I was nodding my head because I took my mind off him for a split second. | ||
| I saw the knockout there, I seen him dip to his left, and I'm like, next time he dips, I'm about to get it. | ||
| So I started to talk. | ||
| And I was like, I got this. | ||
| And I took my mind off of him and he hit me with that fucking spin kick. | ||
| But what it should have said was, stay sharp. | ||
| Stay focused. | ||
| That's what I was saying in the fourth and the fifth round after that kick landed. | ||
| I was like, stay sharp, stay focused. | ||
| I'm just saying that to myself because that's what Rob would tell me. | ||
| He wouldn't tell me to look for the knockout. | ||
| What was the thought process when you're going to face a guy like Barboza that's such a dangerous kicker? | ||
| Was it a lot of feints plus pressure? | ||
| What was the thought process about getting close to him? | ||
| With a guy like Barboza, he throws everything so hard and so explosive. | ||
| I knew I was going to have to eat some of that and just keep pushing forward and just not take my eyes off of him. | ||
| Even when I got wobbled and I dropped, I just tried to not take my eyes off of him. | ||
| With a guy like that that's such a great athlete, which is what I consider Barboza as. | ||
| Rob had these three things. | ||
| He put everybody in an athlete, a competitor, or a fighter category. | ||
| And Barboza was like the epitome of an athlete. | ||
| But with that, you can't show him that he's doing good. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Every time he was throwing, I'm just like walking it off. | ||
| That fucking switch kick is ridiculous. | ||
| He's got the most ridiculous switch kick in the game. | ||
| It's so fast. | ||
| Mark Delagrate, who's seen some of the best of the best fight in Thailand, in real, you know, in life, like right there, in person, he said, I've never seen a guy with a faster switch kick. | ||
| He goes, even the top, the most elite of the Thais, he goes, that's the fastest switch kick I've ever seen. | ||
| Even when he was dead tired, I mean, I beat the hell out of him. | ||
| And he was still throwing it. | ||
| I was like, how is this even... | ||
| Even in the third and fourth round. | ||
| And some of it, I'm kind of like looking while I'm in there. | ||
| I'm like, what is he doing that can make him do that? | ||
| You know, I try and steal a little bit from every guy that I fight, especially. | ||
| And I'm like, what is he doing that's allowing him to be that goddamn fast with it? | ||
| But, you know, I prepare right. | ||
| I prepare with a lot of high-level kickboxers that, you know, they got that style of kicking. | ||
| They just kick it and block off if you let them. | ||
| Yeah, you're going to get something from that, right? | ||
| DC always calls it the rub. | ||
| You fight someone who's real good, you get that rub from him, you just realize now, oh, those kicks can come at you that fast. | ||
| Yeah, and you get that in a lot of different ways. | ||
| Like with Tony, Tony did a lot of things in there that I didn't expect and I didn't really plan for. | ||
| There's only so much planning that you can do until you get in there and you need that experience to rely back on. | ||
| And I feel like that's what I'm building up at a young age. | ||
| It's possible if you get a rematch with Tony. | ||
| With Tony now coming off of that very disappointing fall, which is crazy. | ||
| I feel bad for the dude. | ||
| I need to say something, too. | ||
| This is very important. | ||
| I actually have pictures, too. | ||
| I'm going to send them to you right now, Jamie, so we can put it online. | ||
| Because everybody was repeating the thought that he had worn sunglasses. | ||
| And that's why he fell down. | ||
| That he was wearing sunglasses inside. | ||
| He misspoke. | ||
| He misspoke. | ||
| And he said it to, I think he said, my prescription sunglasses to Ariel Helwani. | ||
| I think that's what they were saying. | ||
| Oh, the square ones that he wears. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'll send it. | ||
| I'm going to send it to Jamie right now. | ||
| But it wasn't. | ||
| But he was probably wearing sunglasses. | ||
| No, he wasn't. | ||
| I have the photos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's silly. | |
| I'll find it. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| Tony loves those songs. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I know he does love the... | ||
| Okay, I know where it is. | ||
| He does love those sunglasses. | ||
| Tony's a smart guy. | ||
| I don't hold that against him. | ||
| He was probably something that was already injured in his leg. | ||
| And I feel bad for the guy. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I don't think he'll ever be the same coming back off that one. | ||
| That's a big... | ||
| I hear detached it. | ||
| Detached it from the bone. | ||
| I mean, that's huge. | ||
| Especially at 34 to try and come back off that. | ||
| And it kind of sucks for me too. | ||
| I think I fought the best Tony Ferguson that you're going to see... | ||
| Period, really. | ||
| You think so? | ||
| Because it was before that injury? | ||
| Yeah, I don't think he's going to be the same again after it. | ||
| And he'll come back and he'll still beat great guys. | ||
| He's still going to do very good, but I don't think it'll be the same. | ||
| Damn it. | ||
| I got this photo in here somewhere. | ||
| I'm gonna find it. | ||
| I can't find it. | ||
| I'll send it to you later. | ||
| But in the photo, he's wearing glasses. | ||
| He's not wearing prescription sunglasses. | ||
| He said... | ||
| He misspoke and said prescription sunglasses. | ||
| That's why Dana told me... | ||
| Dana's ruthless. | ||
| Dana goes, everybody who wears sunglasses inside should have that happen to them. | ||
| This is after this huge fight fell apart, is what David said. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he's probably about right, too, to be honest. | ||
| He's funny, man. | ||
| Yeah, but he wasn't wearing sunglasses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to clear it up for Tony. | |
| Like I said, I feel bad for him. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| The good news is you can come back from that injury. | ||
| That's an injury you can come back from. | ||
| At 34, especially with the way he trains. | ||
| I mean, I think the body can come back. | ||
| It's just, I don't know if his mind will let him be as free. | ||
| That was one of Tony's biggest assets to the style. | ||
| I mean, he just does whatever the fuck he wants, you know? | ||
| And now, when he gets back in there, is he going to be thinking about his knee? | ||
| Even if that's in the back of your mind, it's still limited on that type of style that he likes to fight. | ||
| Maybe you're just fucking with his head right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
LAUGHTER Maybe plant some seeds, Kevin Lee. | |
| You never know. | ||
| There's some money to be made, Joe. | ||
| I gotta get it, boy. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Well, he will be out for quite a while. | ||
| I would imagine he won't be able to even really train hard for six months. | ||
| Yeah, at least. | ||
| He's at least a year out. | ||
| When I look at that... | ||
| And I see that fight and just, you know, how much different shit could be now, you know, had I went into that fight healthy, especially. | ||
| I think the entire division would look different. | ||
| But I'm going to correct all that in a little bit. | ||
| Let me get my hands on Khabib first. | ||
| Well, it's interesting. | ||
| You're in the running now, for sure. | ||
| And before this fight, I think you were a slight underdog in the Barboza fight. | ||
| Yeah, probably. | ||
| But after that domination, I mean, you for sure moved up and... | ||
| You're in the running now, 100%. | ||
| So you got Poirier, who just looked real good against Gagey and won that fight after getting his legs chewed up. | ||
| But Poirier, of course, was knocked out by Michael Johnson. | ||
| And then you've got you coming off the loss to Tony. | ||
| Storm the gates with this fight. | ||
| And then you've got Eddie Alvarez who looked great against Justin Gagey. | ||
| It's very hot. | ||
| And then Conor is going to jail. | ||
| Who knows what's happening? | ||
| I think that's the X factor is what's happening with Conor. | ||
| I mean, Dustin is out there. | ||
| But I just don't see no... | ||
| I'm speaking as if from a fan. | ||
| I just don't see no upsides to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
To you fighting him? | |
| No, no. | ||
| To him and Khabib. | ||
| I mean, they can make it happen. | ||
| And Khabib will go out there and he'll smoke them. | ||
| I mean, that should be real here. | ||
| But I just don't see many fans getting behind that just from what does Dustin bring to the table that Khabib ain't already seen. | ||
| This is the big fight right now. | ||
| I mean, just being completely honest. | ||
| The big fight right now is Khabib and Conor in Russia. | ||
| That's the big fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the big fight. | |
| Or even Madison Square Garden. | ||
| I mean, they can make that happen. | ||
| I don't think New York is ever letting that motherfucker fight there again. | ||
| I just don't think they're going to do that. | ||
| They don't play games, man. | ||
| That athletic commission is a different commission. | ||
| And they're new to MMA. And that was embarrassing for them. | ||
| I mean, him throwing the fucking dolly. | ||
| And the fact that they let them get in there with all his boys. | ||
| And the whole thing was just so thuggish. | ||
| And didn't the thing in Bellator happen in... | ||
| Was that in New York or New Jersey? | ||
| What thing happened in Bellator? | ||
| Where he went over and slapped Goddard and all that. | ||
| Oh, was that Bellator? | ||
| Yeah, he called people bitches and hoes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where was that? | |
| I want to say that was in Ireland or England. | ||
| Was it in Ireland? | ||
| I think it was in England. | ||
| I want to say it was in London. | ||
| Wasn't that the Bellator London card? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But that Goddard thing was crazy. | ||
| I felt like that happened on the East Coast, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But that was one. | |
| Either way. | ||
| It's like he just keeps fucking up with this kind of stuff. | ||
| And, you know, no one's saying... | ||
| Get rid of him. | ||
| He's worth so much money. | ||
| It's really fascinating. | ||
| What I was saying is, imagine if Ray Borg and him switched sides. | ||
| If Ray Borg showed up with all his boys and was screaming and yelling and threw a dolly at the window. | ||
| It's done deal. | ||
| It's done deal forever. | ||
| Oh, it's done deal. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Think about Paul Daly. | |
| Paul Daly must be at home going, Mother! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey look, there's certain things that we just can't do. | |
| Until you get to that stratosphere, that Conor McGregor, there's so much money to be made. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| The rules get bent. | ||
| All Paul Daly did was throw a punch at Josh Koscheck. | ||
| It didn't even connect. | ||
| That could have been sorted out. | ||
| Yeah, and you even had guys like Will Brooks kind of got the hammer put down on him, didn't he? | ||
| After he got knocked out and then pushed the ref. | ||
| I think, was that Will Brooks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Was that Will? | |
| I'm sorry, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You're looking at me funny. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Was it Will? | ||
| I'm thinking you're right. | ||
| It was somebody, you know, he got knocked out and then pushed the ref right after. | ||
| And it's like, they put a lot on... | ||
| Oh, no, it wasn't Will Brooks. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| It was... | ||
|
unidentified
|
God, 170 pounder. | |
| Hmm. | ||
| I know who you're talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn. | |
| God damn it. | ||
| Who was that? | ||
| God, this is going to kill me. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| We'll figure it out. | ||
| And they held him against him, and he was concussed. | ||
| You barely know where you were at. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jason High. | |
| Jason High. | ||
| Yeah, that's what it was. | ||
| A great fighter, too. | ||
| He's a very good fighter. | ||
| And what people don't understand is that once you get knocked out and then you come back, you really don't know what happened. | ||
| You're really out of it. | ||
| Who knocked him out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who stopped? | |
| It was Dos Anjos, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, it was Dos Anjos. | ||
| That was Dos Anjos' welterweight debut, right? | ||
| No, it was at 55 still. | ||
| Yeah, 55 still, yeah. | ||
| But again, he was a great fighter. | ||
| I mean, it's just certain things that we just can't do, Joe. | ||
| Oh, we meaning people of color. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, look, I don't want to say it that way. | ||
| Do you think that Floyd Mayweather can do it, though? | ||
| No, Floyd can do it. | ||
| I just think it's people with that... | ||
| He's... | ||
| There's a level to the game where you're so valuable that if Conor McGregor does a pay-per-view fight, especially if they do... | ||
| You heard all that crazy nonsense they were going to do with McGregor, like, no shoes, you can clinch, but no kicks, no takedowns, no... | ||
| If they ever did that... | ||
| They're just printing money. | ||
| They're printing money. | ||
| I mean, 100%. | ||
| It's so hard for them to not take that money. | ||
| And I don't hold that against them. | ||
| And I've always said that about the UFC. The UFC about the green. | ||
| And I understand that. | ||
| That's kind of where I'm coming from. | ||
| Consistency. | ||
| Yeah, well, I think you just have to realize as a black man in America, really, like, there's two ways to approach the situation. | ||
| You need to be the victim or you can just say it is what it is. | ||
| That's some circumstances. | ||
| You know, black people just don't support other black people the way the Irish support the Irish, the Russian support. | ||
| I mean, I'm just being real with you. | ||
| That's why. | ||
| But the reality is white people in America don't support white Americans the way the Irish support Connor. | ||
| Nobody does. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I mean, and it's an American thing. | ||
| I mean, for you. | ||
| Were you in Vegas when he was fighting Mayweather? | ||
| Did you see the people that were in Mandalay Bay, which wasn't even where the fight was taking place? | ||
| The entire place was flooded with people singing together. | ||
| When he fought Dustin Poirier at 178, they kept me up all... | ||
| I was on the undercard of that fight. | ||
| They kept me up all fucking night in the MGM. They were running up and down the halls of the MGM. Security couldn't stop them. | ||
| I mean, they're crazy. | ||
| They're crazy. | ||
| Obviously, he had great performances on top of it, but that definitely helps. | ||
| When your first fight in the UFC debut is in Boston, they're going crazy for you like that. | ||
| You just don't see that much. | ||
| And it's sad, really. | ||
| You talk about Floyd Mayweather. | ||
| Really, how Floyd got big like that is he had to go against the Mexicans and he had to get them to really hate him in order to get big. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But that's also his style. | ||
| Whereas Conor's style is very different because he knocks guys dead. | ||
| It's a different style. | ||
| You know, like, remember when Tyson was in his prime? | ||
| You knew no one was gonna beat him. | ||
| It was just, you were waiting to see the executions. | ||
| Well, you were just a little boy at the time. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You probably weren't even born. | ||
| My pops was a huge Mike Tyson fan. | ||
| What time were you born? | ||
| 92. Yeah, see? | ||
| Jesus Christ, you missed everything. | ||
| Well, my pops is a huge Mike Tyson fan. | ||
| I'm a huge boxing fan, so, you know, I go back and I'm... | ||
| You were born in 92? | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Huge boxing fan. | ||
| Yeah, just as old as the UFC, actually, so... | ||
| That's crazy, right? | ||
| Pretty much, right? | ||
| It was a year after you were born. | ||
| It started. | ||
| Yeah, man, but the Tyson days, he was the biggest paper you draw, but it was really just you were watching an execution. | ||
| And there was also, like, people were thinking, like, man, is this going to be worth it? | ||
| How long is this one going to last? | ||
| But he still, he had to be the villain a little bit, you know? | ||
| And that's the... | ||
| I mean, it sucks to say, it's just like every real big black fighter is usually the villain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But Anthony Joshua's not, but that's not American. | |
| Yeah, he's British. | ||
| He's different. | ||
| He's totally different, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's loved over there. | |
| Yeah, it's a totally different atmosphere. | ||
| When was the last time we had a really loved African-American fighter in America? | ||
| I mean, they're out there. | ||
| I mean, for sure. | ||
| People love Roy Jones. | ||
| Roy Jones. | ||
| People love Muhammad Ali after, you know. | ||
| But even Roy Jones took some shit for being cocky. | ||
| Well, for sure. | ||
| You know, because he was so dominant. | ||
| But that's the culture, though. | ||
| You gotta be cocky. | ||
| You gotta be all those things. | ||
| Like, even the way I talk a lot of shit, but that's just because that's the culture. | ||
| Like, that's what I do. | ||
| I mean, that's... | ||
| Well, it's also an effective mind game strategy. | ||
| A guy who's talking shit to you, it makes you more anxious, more nervous, more emotions, more everything. | ||
| With certain guys. | ||
| There's certain guys that you can play that to. | ||
| Like I said, everybody's got those three categories. | ||
| With athletes, especially athletes and competitors, they kind of... | ||
| You know, get more shooken up by stuff like that. | ||
| A fighter don't give a fuck. | ||
| You know, you talk shit to Nate Diaz, he don't give a fuck. | ||
| He loves it. | ||
| He likes it. | ||
| He likes it more. | ||
| Me, I like it a little bit more. | ||
| Connor, you can tell he likes it a little bit more. | ||
| It gets my mind off the actual fight itself because that's what we grew up like talking shit, you know, so it's Some guys, though, it rattles them. | ||
| You know the best I've ever seen, the best response to someone shit-talking? | ||
| Rose Namajunas. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| She just went dark. | ||
| Masterful. | ||
| She went like a monk. | ||
| I'm a huge Rose fan. | ||
| She's so badass. | ||
| Yeah, she's dope. | ||
| She might be the best-looking girl in the UFC, and she shaves her fucking head and never wears makeup. | ||
| She doesn't give a fuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| I mean... | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, and she's, I mean, a phenomenal, phenomenal fighter. | ||
| Phenomenal. | ||
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| But just when she was standing in front of... | ||
| Yoana, and she was citing the Lord's Prayer. | ||
| Gangster. | ||
| Yoana's like, I'm the boogeyman. | ||
| Come to get you. | ||
| I'm the boogeyman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And she's like, Our Father in Heaven, how would be the name of it? | |
| Gangster shit you ever heard in your life. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| It was like a movie. | ||
| Dude, she made me nervous. | ||
| She made me nervous when I was standing next to her. | ||
| That's what the thing with, you know, people look at my style, even the way I promote it and talk fights and, you know, talk shit or whatever. | ||
| But there's so many ways to do it. | ||
| You know, there's so many ways to, like, Entertain and have fun with it. | ||
| You don't always have to be, I'ma smack the shit out of your mama and all this. | ||
| There's so many different ways. | ||
| You can not say anything and it become off just as fucking gangsta as the dude that's screaming from across the room. | ||
| But there is a pressure, right? | ||
| Isn't there pressure on fighters to sell in hype fights, to talk a lot of shit? | ||
| I mean, you're seeing Colby Covington taking it off the deep end. | ||
| He goes... | ||
| He goes so crazy, I don't even think they let him go to Brazil. | ||
| When I heard that he was going to fight Dos Anjos in Brazil, I was like, no, Kobe! | ||
| I was thinking of reaching out and telling people to call and bring your own water, whatever you do. | ||
| I mean, I guess he's doing his thing. | ||
| He's still winning fights. | ||
| So at the end of the day, that's what really matters is that he's winning fights. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, that's stylish. | ||
| He's got us talking about him. | ||
| He's got us talking about him. | ||
| Yeah, that too. | ||
| That too. | ||
| But that style, I mean, that shit get played out. | ||
| And you can just tell. | ||
| When it's forced, it's not good. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Well, he just goes against people he doesn't have to. | ||
| Like, he was talking some shit about Jon Jones. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, Jon Jones will smack you in your fucking face, and there's not much you're going to be able to do about it. | ||
| One day you might be in front of him, and then what are you going to do? | ||
| You know? | ||
| I mean, just... | ||
| You're not even fighting Jon Jones. | ||
| Why are you talking shit about Jon? | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| A couple people, even females, I guess he's just trying to get the noise running or whatever. | ||
| I just think there's so many different ways to do it. | ||
| That's the most primitive way of trying to sell yourself and sell a fight. | ||
| There's so many ways. | ||
| Even me, I came up with a lot of the shit that I started doing, I just kind of came up with. | ||
| In the moment. | ||
| Yeah, just, well, before the first big one was the Mike Chiesa thing, you know, where I kind of hit him at the press conference. | ||
| But going into that My mindset wasn't like, oh, let me talk as much shit as I can about them, or let me jump up and down and all this. | ||
| It just was, I did have that, I wanted to stand out. | ||
| Not necessarily that I wanted to entertain. | ||
| I just was like, I'm sitting behind fucking Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier. | ||
| I'm like a kid in a candy store. | ||
| So I just, I wanted to Stand out as much as possible, you know? | ||
| Do you feel like now that you've had a few of these big fights, right? | ||
| The Chiesa fight was a high profile fight, and then of course the Tony fight was a very high profile, and then this last Barboza fight was a real big fight. | ||
| Do you feel like now you've like settled more into the fact that not only do you belong here, you deserve to be here, but you're more comfortable being here? | ||
| Yeah, there's that saying, like, the fake it till you make it. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know? | |
| Like, for real. | ||
| Like, that's not a joke. | ||
| Why were you faking it? | ||
| Like, when did you feel like you were faking it? | ||
| Obviously, you were never really faking it because you were winning fights. | ||
| I exaggerated, you know? | ||
| Like, I exaggerated certain shit. | ||
| Like, I was having fun with it, but I was kind of learning on the job, too. | ||
| Because, like, doing interviews and stuff like that, it takes some... | ||
| It's hard to get to your level. | ||
| Like, you're very, like... | ||
| I listen to your show all the time. | ||
| Like, you're... | ||
| Love it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| But you are very good at it. | ||
| It takes a long time to do that. | ||
| I had to kind of learn on the job. | ||
| So yeah, I would exaggerate a little bit too much here and there. | ||
| But the fake it till you make it thing, I think it's... | ||
| A lot of people hear that and they take it negatively all the time. | ||
| I always heard that and I took it positive. | ||
| I read George St. Pierre's book and he talked about that a lot. | ||
| He texted me two days before this fight with Barboza and he was talking about giving me some tips and pointers and all that. | ||
| But the last thing he said to me was, You know, you're gonna have that fear before you go in there, but once you get in there, your body's just gonna turn on autopilot. | ||
| Just fake it till you make it. | ||
| Fake the confidence until you make it. | ||
| And I think that's how he approaches it. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| What fight... | ||
| What it was is... | ||
| Like I said, going into that press conference especially, I wanted to stand out. | ||
| And through the rest of my life, in Detroit especially, I was always taught, like, don't stand out as much as you can. | ||
| Stay low and keep moving. | ||
| Chill. | ||
| Keep your head down. | ||
| Them folks' business is them folks' business. | ||
| I always stayed on what I'm doing. | ||
| I always kind of had a vision. | ||
| I always had to go. | ||
| So my opposite was to stand out. | ||
| So I had to kind of... | ||
| Fake it. | ||
| And not necessarily fake it till I make it, fake it till I became it. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And I think it was right after the Tony fight where I was like, maybe the two months it took me to get over it. | ||
| At that moment, I was like, man, I really do have that confidence. | ||
| I don't have to fake it. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| The Tony fight. | ||
| The Tony fight. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Your podcast, too. | ||
| I mean, your podcast has been huge to me. | ||
| And it's hard for me to really explain it. | ||
| Me just growing up, I didn't have a lot of confidence. | ||
| People see me and see me in interviews and they just think that's how I was. | ||
| But I would lose a lot of my wrestling matches as a kid just because I thought that... | ||
| And this might alienate some people. | ||
| And it might sound like off, but it's just the way I grew up. | ||
| The white boys above 8 Mile, they got the money. | ||
| They're working harder than you. | ||
| They're better than you. | ||
| So that was kind of like my mentality, even when I started wrestling. | ||
| These kids start wrestling when they were five. | ||
| I started when I was 16. And they just would beat me. | ||
| I wouldn't even really compete with them. | ||
| It took me to go to college. | ||
| Because that was my first real exposure to white people. | ||
| It's as crazy as that sounds. | ||
| I obviously knew white people when I was a kid. | ||
| The teachers and stuff. | ||
| But nobody around my same age. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So when I got around, and there's one school in particular, Detroit Catholic Central. | ||
| They were number one school in Michigan at the time. | ||
| But they were, so in Detroit, every mile is numbered. | ||
| I was born and raised pretty much on seven mile. | ||
| Eight mile is like the divider between the suburbs and the city. | ||
| These kids were like on 26 mile. | ||
| So they were like way up there, like with, you know, Rich. | ||
| Rich is all you know. | ||
| So I just, I don't know, for some reason, I just didn't have the confidence. | ||
| But when I got around them and I started living and kind of training together every day, and I realized I'm like, we all the same, you know? | ||
| He works just as hard as... | ||
| I can see him every day. | ||
| I see him going to class and I see him going to his house. | ||
| That moment gave me the confidence to be like, okay, I can't compete with other people. | ||
| I can't compete with anybody, really. | ||
| Your podcast was the next step to that. | ||
| That was me at the collegiate level. | ||
| The first podcast I heard from you was the Lance Armstrong one. | ||
| And I was like, this is like... | ||
| World-level, you know, and when I hear him talking, I hear him talk so candidly, and I'm like, oh, he's just a normal dude. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He's just, I guess in my head, I didn't have that before, you know? | ||
| And that's like, we're all the same. | ||
| And that really has allowed me to go over to Ireland and compete, to go down to Brazil and compete, to fight the best kickboxer in the world and not have that, and still have that same confidence. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I see what you're saying. | ||
| Like, just hearing people talk and realizing that we're all just human. | ||
| Yeah, all the same. | ||
| You see some superstar in whatever their field is, whether it's a musician or whatever, you just assume that person has got to be a different thing than you. | ||
| If you see Mick Jagger or something like that, that's got to be a different thing than me. | ||
| He's not the same thing as me. | ||
| Yeah, and the thing with, and I started the hashtag 25toLife and all that mostly because the way I grew up, I didn't get to see many successful people. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I didn't have... | ||
| Nobody ever told me, oh, you can't do this. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| But nobody ever told me I could either. | ||
| And nobody showed you other people that were doing it right around you where you could learn from them. | ||
| I had no examples. | ||
| You know, the only examples, literally the only examples I had was the dope man, you know, the jack boys, you know, the pimps. | ||
| And, you know, you didn't really have much else to really look forward to. | ||
| So when I was, I thought when I was 25, like where I am now, I thought for sure I was just going to be in jail. | ||
| Like, Yeah, that's one of the most important points when people talk about people being able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they should just get a job and they should just do this. | ||
| You say that because you grew up around that. | ||
| But if you didn't grow up around anybody doing that, you're feeling the way you felt when you were around wrestlers that had been competing their whole lives. | ||
| You didn't feel like you belonged there. | ||
| You didn't have any of that success around you. | ||
| That's... | ||
| That is one of the most important things in life is surrounding yourself with positive people. | ||
| It's so difficult to do if you're in a bad place. | ||
| If you grew up in a bad neighborhood and you're surrounded by bad people, very few people have the vision to see past that. | ||
| And they have no examples. | ||
| I mean, you see someone on television, again, you're going to think, that's not me. | ||
| Like, still to this day, when I meet a rock star, I still get weirded out. | ||
| I still get weirded out. | ||
| It doesn't matter how famous you get. | ||
| You get weirded out around other famous people. | ||
| They just don't seem like you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And especially when you kind of grow up in that environment and, you know, it's you don't really, you know, you see a doctor on TV and you don't you just don't connect with it. | ||
| You know, at least for me, like, that's what I wanted to be. | ||
| I wanted to be a doctor first, but I didn't, you know, I didn't live in neighborhoods with doctors, you know, I didn't meet a doctor. | ||
| When I did, he was like some old dude. | ||
| And it's like he didn't really give a fuck. | ||
| He's like, you know, you know, you're on Medicaid, motherfucker. | ||
| Like, you know, you know, they get 35 bucks. | ||
| Get the fuck on. | ||
| But, you know, I think that is a big point of it is just... | ||
| To have somebody to tell you that you can, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| So at least I try. | ||
| And then to see people around you that are working hard and succeeding and emulate them and learn from them. | ||
| People, we don't exist in a vacuum. | ||
| We exist in communities. | ||
| And this is something that is very difficult for people to understand if they're in a good community. | ||
| If you're in a good community or if you're in a bad community, it's difficult to understand, too, the value of a good community. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I think one of the biggest things is just that integration is really important. | ||
| And I'm starting to see that the more I'm getting out and kind of seeing the world and seeing the way things run and kind of comparing that to the way I grew up. | ||
| And it's just like... | ||
| There was no... | ||
| There was so much... | ||
| It just seemed so segregated to me. | ||
| Which is a weird term to use in this day and night. | ||
| But it just did. | ||
| Literally, I remember because my mom, she did a good job of keeping us in good schools. | ||
| So our school was on 10 Mile, which was in the suburbs. | ||
| I went to Southfield High. | ||
| But I remember a couple times, me and my brother, we would try and walk to the school. | ||
| So you had to walk past through 8 Mile. | ||
| And... | ||
| Policeman had pulled over three or four times picked us up in the car and took us back across and then dropped us off like you don't and It's like we go to school there. | ||
| You know what I mean like they didn't believe you You know we we weren't also like the best looking kids probably Yeah, yeah, we did but but you know I have to but I feel like that integration and It's just really, really important. | ||
| And I'm starting to see that the more I'm getting out and learning the world. | ||
| We're all the same. | ||
| Literally. | ||
| We're all the same. | ||
| All the same. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, we vary for sure, but we're all just people. | |
| And sometimes having all those advantages when you're young is a disadvantage. | ||
| Because the hungriest, most determined people are the people that had nothing at one point in their life when they understand what nothing means. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think I attribute that to a lot of my success. | ||
| And that's what I... I always keep in the back of my head. | ||
| Especially going through college. | ||
| It was such a rough... | ||
| 20 bucks a week I survived off of. | ||
| I was fighting full time. | ||
| I was taking 15 credits. | ||
| I was wrestling still at the same time. | ||
| I just was on the hustle. | ||
| I was moving. | ||
| Super grind. | ||
| Super grind, but on nothing. | ||
| I had a 1996 Thunderbird with 300,000 miles. | ||
| I was burning that shit up. | ||
| Every day. | ||
| But I keep that in the back of my head even now. | ||
| I don't ever get comfortable. | ||
| I don't ever get content with it. | ||
| I think about that with having kids. | ||
| Because I have young kids. | ||
| And I think my kids have never known that kind of financial struggle. | ||
| I think financial struggle in particular is something that just... | ||
| To this day, I still think about being broke. | ||
| And it motivates me. | ||
| I'll never slack off because of that. | ||
| I think if you haven't... | ||
| But also like when you have kids, you don't want your kids to struggle. | ||
| It's like all my friends that are interesting all have fucked up lives. | ||
| All of them. | ||
| Everything went crazy. | ||
| Everyone was fucking abused or someone was an asshole. | ||
| There's alcoholics or drug addicts in their family. | ||
| They're all the fun ones. | ||
| Those are all my favorite people. | ||
| And they use it as motivation to learn the world and learn things. | ||
| And that's what I kind of did as a kid. | ||
| I kind of took a look around when I was... | ||
| Maybe 15 was probably like the time that really clicked for me when I found MMA and I kind of saw that this is what I want to do. | ||
| That's when it kind of clicked. | ||
| I was just like, I don't want to be around like the rest of these motherfuckers here. | ||
| How did you get started? | ||
| Where'd you find a good gym? | ||
| So when I was 15, I just... | ||
| I saw George St. Pierre and BJ Penn. | ||
| It was the first time I'd seen a fight. | ||
| There was no MMA gyms or anything like that. | ||
| I just went out for the wrestling team at the high school because I was already there and all that. | ||
| I didn't start really getting into MMA until I came back one year from college. | ||
| And, uh, I wanted to sign up for a jujitsu tournament and I never trained it or anything. | ||
| I went and signed up for the jujitsu tournament. | ||
| And then the guy's like, Oh yeah, we do some fights on, on the jujitsu tournament on Sunday. | ||
| He was like, we do some fights on Saturday and, uh, there's nobody at, you know, for this, for this guy. | ||
| I was like, fight that motherfucker right now. | ||
| Like, I never trained before. | ||
| I just wrestled. | ||
| So I was like, yeah, please. | ||
| It was like Tuesday. | ||
| How old are you? | ||
| 18? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I just showed up. | ||
| No mouthpiece. | ||
| I didn't know you needed a mouthpiece or cup or anything. | ||
| Oh, you didn't have a cup? | ||
| Yeah, the dude I fought was like 26. They went to Walmart. | ||
| As I'm getting ready to step into the octagon, I was like, where's your mouthpiece and cup? | ||
| I was like, what? | ||
| Preparing for a wrestling match, I guess. | ||
| And they ran to Walmart and grabbed me one. | ||
| I beat the fuck out of the guy. | ||
| Did you have any striking at all? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What I saw on TV. Oh my God! | |
| I didn't really have real training until I got over to... | ||
| I mean, I trained hard with one of my coaches, Sean Desay. | ||
| He was my first true coach in Michigan. | ||
| And we trained hard. | ||
| And he showed me a lot of things. | ||
| He was a boxer, so he showed me a lot of things. | ||
| But I didn't really have a real... | ||
| I was still a full-time student when I got the call from the UFC. I got the call in December and finals... | ||
| I got to call like finals week. | ||
| And I was like, well shit, let me go ahead and bust out these finals and then, you know, I'm done with this shit. | ||
| And then the fight was like late January, I think or so. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, so I was like a full-time student when I took the, I was taking 15 credits as a med student. | ||
| So you really had only had like a couple of years of striking at that point. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, if that, yeah. | ||
| And, you know, a lot of wrestling and a lot of, you know, I didn't really get it. | ||
| Really good into striking until I got over to Vegas and worked with Dewey Cooper. | ||
| That makes it even more impressive, man. | ||
| You know, that you've been able to make such a big leap in such a short amount of time. | ||
| I mean, we're talking about like seven years now. | ||
| I mean, that's really crazy. | ||
| Consistency, I think. | ||
| Consistency is the key. | ||
| Like, I love it. | ||
| I actually... | ||
| Love this shit. | ||
| I got the most fights in the lightweight division since my debut than anybody else. | ||
| It's just because I stay consistent. | ||
| I keep my body healthy. | ||
| I keep showing up. | ||
| The more you see things coming at you, the better it gets. | ||
| That's definitely a factor, but I think it's also intelligence. | ||
| The understanding of your... | ||
| There's different kinds of intelligence, too. | ||
| There's intelligence of how to get good at things. | ||
| Some people just... | ||
| I don't know if it's a physical thing... | ||
| If their body works better or if it's just that they are able to see how someone does something and listen to instruction and then break it down and put it together. | ||
| But I've seen it in little kids, man. | ||
| When I used to teach little kids, there was little kids that weren't even like physically talented. | ||
| It's not like they were gymnasts. | ||
| They could do backflips and shit. | ||
| They could do crazy shit with their body. | ||
| There's some kids where you would show them like, see this foot? | ||
| This foot's got a pivot and then it's all about your hips. | ||
| And they would see you and they would go, okay. | ||
| And then you'd see them breaking it down. | ||
| And then other kids would be like, They just couldn't see what you were doing. | ||
| They'd throw their feet up in their air. | ||
| Their foot would never pivot. | ||
| They'd put all this pressure on their knee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. | |
| Don't do that. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| You've got to turn your hips. | ||
| Your foot's got to go with it. | ||
| And then some people just could mirror you. | ||
| I see it in jiu-jitsu, too. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| For sure, big time. | ||
| In jiu-jitsu and grappling, especially. | ||
| Some people just see it. | ||
| They just see it. | ||
| I think it's come... | ||
| Like you say, it's an intelligence. | ||
| People think it's just a brute thing that you're doing, but it's very, at least for me, I approach it kind of like a scientist almost. | ||
| It's A, B, C, D, E. I go from here. | ||
| If not, then I branch off. | ||
| I have different systems for every kind of situation that will arise. | ||
| But I kind of approach it like a scientist. | ||
| I went to school for biomed. | ||
| That kind of stuff. | ||
| There's art to it. | ||
| There's a huge, huge portion of it that's art. | ||
| The expression. | ||
| Yeah, the expression part is art. | ||
| And I think it's one of the purest art forms fighting this that there is. | ||
| If someone looks great doing it, that is like a form of art. | ||
| Oh, 100%. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I get so irritated whenever somebody says it's not. | ||
| They're crazy. | ||
| I get so irritated. | ||
| Did you see Bellator when Gaston Bolanos landed that insane spinning elbow? | ||
| It's like one of the greatest spinning elbows of all time. | ||
| Probably, probably. | ||
| I've watched that shit about 80 times. | ||
| I just play it back like I'm watching a flower bloom or watching a fucking eagle soar. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| He lands this. | ||
| The dude's coming at him. | ||
| He steps and bam! | ||
| Just at the perfect time. | ||
| And the dude just face plants. | ||
| I'm like, that shit is just art. | ||
| That's art. | ||
| But even when you see a really, really high-level fighter move around, every one of our bodies moves different. | ||
| You go back to being able to see somebody and emulate it. | ||
| But you still will put your own style on it. | ||
| Nobody moves the same. | ||
| And I think that's what makes it a pure art form. | ||
| And I think MMA is more so even than boxing. | ||
| Because in boxing, you only got two hands. | ||
| It's a science. | ||
| It's a sweet science. | ||
| There's only so many combinations that you can even put together that. | ||
| But when you talk about something that's Without limits, there's so much art that goes into it. | ||
| It's like dance. | ||
| It's like yoga. | ||
| It's like all these things that are really the truest form of art, I think. | ||
| Yeah, I couldn't agree more. | ||
| That's why I was mad at Meryl Streep. | ||
| She doesn't know anything about mixed martial arts, which are not the arts! | ||
| They are the arts! | ||
| 100%. | ||
| And I think the most purest form of it, too. | ||
| What else do you call arts if not that? | ||
| Well, they don't understand what it is. | ||
| And one of the things that they don't understand is that it's so difficult to do. | ||
| And that when you see the finished product, when the person steps into the cage and competes that night, you're not just seeing these brutish moves. | ||
| You're seeing their soul. | ||
| You're seeing how much focus, where they are as a human in their life at this point. | ||
| Where's the vitality of their body? | ||
| What kind of... | ||
| What martial arts education have they gotten? | ||
| How technically aware are they? | ||
| How much did they think about the training? | ||
| If they're a wrestler, did they only concentrate on the wrestling? | ||
| Did they stay away from striking because they don't like getting hit? | ||
| If they're a striker, did they only concentrate on staying up or did they learn how to fight on the ground? | ||
| Did they absorb at all? | ||
| Did they develop a full repertoire of expression with their body throwing bones and choking each other? | ||
| And at the same time, going through life, through the whole situation, that's the hardest part. | ||
| At the end of the day, I'm still a 25-year-old dude. | ||
| I'm still learning shit. | ||
| Trying to keep it together like everybody else. | ||
| You'll be like that when you're 80, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Probably. | |
| It fucking is, man. | ||
| We look at these 80-year-old people and say, well, that guy should have his shit together. | ||
| That fucking guy's better today than he was yesterday if he's paying attention. | ||
| I think that's what it is, too. | ||
| At the core of it, I always think that everybody else has their shit together. | ||
| I just assume everybody else... | ||
| That's from your childhood. | ||
| 100%, I think. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I had the same problem. | ||
| I think everybody has their shit together, and everybody can see that I don't. | ||
| They can see my flaws. | ||
| And it keeps me sharp, though. | ||
| And it translates to fighting, too. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| If my hand goes here for a split second, I feel like the guy can see it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Or when I throw something, I feel like he's going to be there to block it. | ||
| That's the best way to stay? | ||
| It makes me stay sharp, but it goes from sometimes outside of life, too. | ||
| It's good that you think like this because clearly you're a very confident guy and you're obviously successful in your mixed martial arts career, but to have just a little bit of that insecurity is fuel. | ||
| It just keeps you sharp. | ||
| It keeps you aware. | ||
| To be confident is good. | ||
| Delusional. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| Terrible. | ||
| Everybody knows that one guy that thinks he can beat a guy that he's not ever going to fucking be able to beat. | ||
| You know, I mean, there's a lot of people like, give me that fight. | ||
| I'll take that fight. | ||
| Oh, yeah, 100%. | ||
| It's like, hold on, bro. | ||
| It's like, wait, hold on. | ||
| That's why you don't see, you know, you never see me say some outlandish shit like, oh, I can't never be beat or, you know, or I can go out there and, you know, arm bar Cain Velasquez, you know, or something like that. | ||
| I mean, Not meaning to pick on Ronda, but... | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| But I think the Ronda thing, there was a lot going on there, man. | ||
| Coaching-wise, there was a lot going on there. | ||
| She just came along at a time when there was no one like her. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And she was a real Olympic caliber athlete, and her judo was at such a high level, no one could fuck with her. | ||
| And she was throwing people around until someone could fuck with her, until she ran into someone like Holly Holm. | ||
| then we really saw the holes in the preparation the distractions the fact that she had you know movie deals going on they wanted her to do roadhouse and she's scripts and this and agent meetings and all the bullshit man it's like a fucking hollywood it it was like a hollywood script yeah like this is what happens to you and this is how like rocky when rocky went soft and And then all of a sudden you got this badass Holly Holm sitting there ready to fucking head kick you into another dimension. | ||
| And that's what happened. | ||
| And like you said, I think most of it is just trying to stay aware and not get delusional about it. | ||
| Because it is very easy to kind of slip into that and fall into that. | ||
| And, you know, sometimes shit will hit you. | ||
| And that's what happened in my second fight that I lost to Leonardo Santos. | ||
| In each fight... | ||
| I can always see myself losing, you know? | ||
| And people ask me that and they're like, you talk about all this visualization that you do, like, sometimes I visualize myself getting hurt too in fights. | ||
| Do you do that to see how you recover? | ||
| Like, how do you, what do you do? | ||
| So it's not a new experience. | ||
| When Barboza fucking spinning heel kicks me in the head. | ||
| It's always the punch that don't hurt you. | ||
| We were texting before that fight, and we were setting up this podcast. | ||
| Listen, I just got to concentrate on making sure that dude don't kick me in the head. | ||
| And then after the fight, like, damn, he fucking kicked me in the head. | ||
| You were definitely preparing yourself for the possibility. | ||
| Because it has to be there. | ||
| The only fight that it wasn't there for me was Leonardo Santos. | ||
| Because he was a multiple-time champion on the ground in jiu-jitsu. | ||
| So I was only really worried about his ground game. | ||
| I kind of just dismissed his stand-up. | ||
| And I'm like, there's no way this guy's going to beat me. | ||
| And the worst thing... | ||
| Happen in the fight like the first minute he got me down and I got off I got him off me in like 30 seconds or something and after that I was like whew this is about to be a cakewalk. | ||
| I'm about to just run through this man like he don't you know I'm like it was 17,000 people in the arena. | ||
| I'm like we all just waiting on him to fall you know only him he was the only one that saw that he could clip me. | ||
| And I'll be damned. | ||
| But how valuable was that fight for you, though? | ||
| I mean, it was probably one of the most important ones in my career. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| There's been a couple. | ||
| The losses have always been the ones that I feel like I will look back and I'll say, damn, that was the one that really made it. | ||
| That fight in particular, I think, really made it because it kind of drilled home some of the things that Robert Follis was selling to me. | ||
| That's the only fight since I've been in Vegas. | ||
| Well, obviously since before this fight, but that Robert Follis wasn't in my corner. | ||
| And it was... | ||
| If I'm being honest, it would save some money. | ||
| It would save the 10% that he was wanting or whatever. | ||
| And I was like, I'm going to smoke this kid. | ||
| I'm like, Rob, just sit back. | ||
| You watch it from home. | ||
| Enjoy. | ||
| And I'm going to go out there and I'm going to smoke this kid. | ||
| And I didn't have his voice of reason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| To make me say, this kid is dangerous everywhere. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Stay sharp everywhere. | ||
| And I let my guard down and he hit me with a good punch. | ||
| But it was that one where I was like, I never had Rob not in my corner again. | ||
| Or that voice, you know. | ||
| And now I have to make do without it. | ||
| But, you know. | ||
| You're recreating it though. | ||
| But to go back, he was just that voice of reason not to get delusional. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because it is easy, especially when you're young and you got the hormones flying and you feel like you're the man. | ||
| You're confident like, shit, I'm the man. | ||
| You can't touch me. | ||
| But you gotta have somebody like, hey, bro, bro. | ||
| You're very good, but you still gotta be sharp too. | ||
| These men that you're fighting are very, very good too. | ||
| Do you think that sometimes someone can't tell it to you? | ||
| Do you just have to learn it? | ||
| Yeah, you gotta go through those experiences. | ||
| And I think that's in all walks of everything. | ||
| And that's kind of what I bring to it, too. | ||
| I don't want to just be a great fighter. | ||
| I want to be great at everything. | ||
| I want to be a chef, and I want to be a dancer, and I want to be a scientist, and a doctor. | ||
| That's just the way my brain works. | ||
| I just want to be the best at fucking everything. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| That's a great way to think, man. | ||
| It's kind of interesting sometimes, but, you know. | ||
| It's a great expression, the way you do anything is the way you do everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, probably, yeah. | |
| Yeah, I mean, I think there's something to that. | ||
| If you half-ass things, I mean, you can get away with being a great fighter and still half-ass things in your life, but maybe you would be better if you didn't. | ||
| Like, maybe you would be an even better fighter, or better whatever you are, fucking tennis player, whatever it is, if you didn't half-ass other things in your life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe you would really reach your full potential. | |
| 100%. | ||
| And I think that even in the fighting realm, that's what a lot of this last fight was for me, is getting back to... | ||
| Making the fight first. | ||
| Focusing on the fight before anything else. | ||
| And relieving some of the mental stress off me before I step into the... | ||
| When I stepped in for that Tony fight, I was already tired. | ||
| I was already... | ||
| My body was already... | ||
| My brain was just overloaded. | ||
| And I was already broken down. | ||
| And I made the fight second. | ||
| Or I made the fight last. | ||
| We went race car driving the week of the fight. | ||
| And looking back on it after, I was like, oh my god. | ||
| In Vegas? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you go to one of those exotic places? | ||
| The Dream Racing. | ||
| Shout out to them. | ||
| I mean, they hooked me up. | ||
| I had fun. | ||
| Don't you think it's also important to have some recreation? | ||
| Yeah, but that's a little... | ||
| That was too much? | ||
| A little too much, mostly because they were filming and I wanted to make it good. | ||
| We had fun with it. | ||
| Oh, for the countdown shows? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How hard is that shit? | |
| How hard is the press obligations and all the constant interviews and all that shit? | ||
| I enjoy it. | ||
| I honestly enjoy doing media for the most part. | ||
| It's just uncertain. | ||
| It can be... | ||
| Too much sometimes. | ||
| Do they organize it around your training? | ||
| Or do you have to organize your training around media obligations? | ||
| I usually organize it around my training. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's good. | |
| When you hear that the training has to be organized around media obligations, I'm like, oh, that's not good. | ||
| I've heard of people having to get up at 6 in the morning and do a block of radio calls and shit. | ||
| I'm like, well, I don't like that. | ||
| I don't like that shit. | ||
| Yeah, you have to do that, but I still... | ||
| I just make do with it. | ||
| I think as long as you're enjoying it and you're just going with the flow, it's not a hindrance necessarily. | ||
| If you're like, fuck, I don't want to fucking be here. | ||
| I don't want to get up at 6am and do this shit. | ||
| Then when you get to, all I want to do is train the whole time. | ||
| It can be a hindrance even more so. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, I guess, right? | ||
| The way you approach something will change what that thing is. | ||
| Yeah, and it's got to be natural for you, too. | ||
| I actually like doing it, so I think it's just something that if I could see myself, if I forced it or if I was one of these guys that didn't at all, then yeah, I could see it being even a bigger hindrance, but since I like it, I mean, it's fine. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Well, as long as it doesn't fuck with your training. | ||
| One of the things I was really impressed about Saturday night is your endurance. | ||
| I mean, you were fresh as a daisy even in the fifth round, and that was a grueling pace. | ||
| You know, and we didn't really focus too much on too much conditioning. | ||
| You know, I did a lot of long runs to kind of thin my muscles out a little bit. | ||
| I did a lot of longer cardio stuff. | ||
| I kind of got away from a lot of the explosiveness that I used to do, especially for the Tony fight. | ||
| Tony fight was all explosion. | ||
| It was all big movements. | ||
| It was all like, you know, I'm going to knock this motherfucker out. | ||
| But this fight, and I realized during that, I was like, you know, I got to approach it smarter. | ||
| In that, it actually became better cardio than me pushing myself too hard. | ||
| I'm torn on that because I see guys preparing that way where they do a lot of long runs. | ||
| That's a big Nate Diaz thing and his brother Nick. | ||
| They do ultra marathons and triathlons. | ||
| I feel like there's some real benefit to having that deep base in cardio. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| But I mean, it's balance. | ||
| Balance like anything else with life. | ||
| You know, you got to be able to balance those really strong, you know, you can't explode every time. | ||
| You can't sprint the whole time. | ||
| You can't run a marathon the whole time either. | ||
| So I try my best to, that's how I want to be, as well-rounded as I possibly can be in having great cardio and understanding what that's like is part of that. | ||
| Yeah, it's hard for people to understand, but you're not throwing 100% of your power all the time. | ||
| Yeah, you can't. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| Yeah, no, you can't. | ||
| Especially not with a guy like Barboza, who is in there the whole time. | ||
| There was some spots that I got him, and it's like guys normally will give up. | ||
| They'll quit. | ||
| I'm hitting them with... | ||
| Big shots. | ||
| And he's just steady showing the ref that I'm still in this thing. | ||
| I'm still moving. | ||
| And then he stands up and he can spin and wheel kick you. | ||
| He's still got that explosiveness in him. | ||
| You can't go 100% right out the gate. | ||
| You got to be smart. | ||
| You can't wear out. | ||
| You got to be smart. | ||
| And that's one of the things that Rob would always tell me. | ||
| And again, that's one of the things I'm telling myself during the fight. | ||
| Be smart. | ||
| Be smart. | ||
| Barboza's also, I think, the first guy and the only guy to stop two people with leg kicks. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Vicious leg kicks. | ||
| Yeah, my shin is on fire right now. | ||
| I checked a couple of them. | ||
| Did you bring in anybody that does wheel kicks or anything to get used to the timing of that? | ||
| Yeah, a couple guys. | ||
| Really good Taekwondo specialist. | ||
| His name is Vlad. | ||
| Shout out to Vlad. | ||
| He's probably the best. | ||
| He's a little bit better than Barboza. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Barboza's... | |
| Really? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Just on that non-telegraphic portion of it, because that's what really gets you hurt, which Barbosa is very non-telegraphic. | ||
| But those Taekwondo guys, they can move a little bit different. | ||
| You know, Chris Spang is another one that Woodley brought out for Wonderboy because he's got that same style. | ||
| That Taekwondo style of spinning is a little bit different. | ||
| I brought out like three or four guys. | ||
| Well, it's the guy, when you train like that, you're not throwing punches to the face. | ||
| So the kicks have to be ultra fast. | ||
| And there's also, I think, there's some benefit to learning like Kyokushin for that and Taekwondo for that. | ||
| When they take out those punches to the face, there's something about leg dexterity. | ||
| Those guys have crazy leg, like Yair Rodriguez style. | ||
| Like crazy leg dexterity. | ||
| Yeah, me and Yair got to spar a couple of times before this last fight. | ||
| He's another one of those. | ||
| I mean, he's got that same type of style. | ||
| And I steal a lot from those guys. | ||
| I kind of started picking it up when I fought a kid named James Moutassari. | ||
| He's very good. | ||
| He was a national champion. | ||
| National Taekwondo champion. | ||
| A couple of times, I think, for Korea. | ||
| But I mean, he's just super underrated, especially his kicking. | ||
| But preparing for that fight... | ||
| I had to work with a lot of Taekwondo guys and right off the bat, I'm like, oh, this is a different style. | ||
| It's like four or five different styles of kicking, I think. | ||
| Theirs is like... | ||
| One of the better mixes of speed and power and non-telegraphic, and I try and blend that a little bit more with Muay Thai and find the best style. | ||
| I feel like Muay Thai is absolutely the best, but there's some shit that those Taekwondo guys can do that'll catch you off guard, and if you know those other things, you can do those things. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| Like the wheel kicks, and that's what you see with Edson. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, the tie style has probably the hardest kicks and the most technical from it, but, you know, you can kind of see some of them coming, you know, unless you got freak speed like Barboza, you know, but actually, technical-wise, you know, you can kind of see it coming a little bit more. | ||
| I just think with the tie style... | ||
| It's more effective, because it's just more effective, just chopping the legs. | ||
| It's just brutally effective. | ||
| And obviously in Taekwondo, there's none of that. | ||
| So those guys, if you've ever seen matches where Taekwondo guys fight Muay Thai guys, they get obliterated. | ||
| They get obliterated. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For sure. | |
| Because if you allow the Muay Thai guy to kick the legs, the Taekwondo guys just really don't know what to do. | ||
| But once they learn it, Then they have the Taekwondo too, but it's a matter of whether, like we were talking about before, if you're a wrestler, do you really learn how to strike or do you just try to take everybody down? | ||
| If the Taekwondo guys really learn how to check leg kicks, they already know how to kick. | ||
| They'll be able to pick up the Thai style way quicker than the Thai guys are going to be able to do jumping wheel kicks and shit like that. | ||
| That stuff is already ingrained in their wheelhouse. | ||
| It's in their synapses. | ||
| They know what to do. | ||
| Yeah, and I think that's one of the things, the beauties about MMA being such a young sport is, you know, you're still seeing guys evolve. | ||
| And, you know, like me, I'm trying to take the best of those styles and make them great for MMA. You know, because there's certain, you know, you can't chop down a leg if a guy's trying to take you down, you know. | ||
| But you can still chop the leg, but there's certain ways that you can change that up. | ||
| And that's one of the beauties about the sport being so young is still figuring out. | ||
| People ask me... | ||
| I sat right next to, on an aerial show, I sat right next to Demetrius Johnson, and they asked me who's the best pound-for-pound fighter, and I think people expected me to say me or something, or say DJ, and I honestly don't think that he's been... | ||
| I haven't seen yet. | ||
| I think he's still a 16-year-old kid out there somewhere that's going to find the best... | ||
| The best guy out there? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Really? | ||
| You don't think Demetrius is the best guy? | ||
| No, Demetrius... | ||
| I mean, Demetrius does... | ||
| I mean, he's great. | ||
| He does a lot of things, but he gets away with a lot of stuff that he does because the guys that he's going against are 25-pounders. | ||
| They don't have a whole lot of explosive one-punch power to really make you pay for some of the mistakes. | ||
| Especially as far as the hop switching and stuff. | ||
| That's why TJ can get away with it a lot more at 35, I think, than a 55-pound fighter would. | ||
| TJ Cruz, a lot of those 35ers can have that style. | ||
| Because if you leave an opening, the consequences can be so much more devastating because they hit so much harder. | ||
| Yeah, I mean your legs are your shock absorbers. | ||
| When I get the wobble, the leg are the shock absorbers. | ||
| If your legs are in the air while you get hit by somebody that's explosive like that, you're going night-night. | ||
| The only thing that's eating all the shock is your brain. | ||
| I bet Dwayne Ludwig would disagree with you if you sat down and talked to him because I think the idea is to present a very complex target and to overload the brain with possibilities. | ||
| I feel that, you know, and I try and do that too. | ||
| I try and, you know, I've taken Dwayne's, a couple of Dwayne's seminars actually. | ||
| He's a wizard. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, he comes over to Extreme Couture and does some things. | ||
| So, you know, I like his style. | ||
| Shout out to Dwayne Ludwig. | ||
| Yeah, no, I love Dwayne's style and it's just a different style to be had, but I feel like that's not even, it's still not the best style, you know. | ||
| I don't think the best style has been, Demetrius Johnson has a great style, but I don't think the best style has been seen yet. | ||
| Especially for him. | ||
| But out of what you've seen, He's got the best style. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, everybody's different. | ||
| Everybody's different, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| The argument is him and Jon Jones. | ||
| These are the two arguments. | ||
| And I feel like Jon Jones, as far as the level of talent, no question. | ||
| Jon's faced Shogun, DC twice, Gustafson, I mean, Vitor Belfort. | ||
| I mean, Jesus Christ. | ||
| You just keep going and going and going and going. | ||
| Glover Teixeira. | ||
| No, he's got the resume, but I don't know. | ||
| I think George St. Pierre still, you know, George is a little bit behind the times now, a little bit. | ||
| Do you think so? | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| Man, I don't know. | ||
| After that Bisping fight, I would never say that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, but Bisping is also from the same era, I think. | ||
| I think George St. Pierre, for sure, I think is the greatest fighter that there's been. | ||
| I mean, when you look at the resumes, I don't think nobody else compares, really. | ||
| You know, he's got two losses. | ||
| Avenged both those losses devastatingly. | ||
| You know, came back after four years and won the title at a higher weight class. | ||
| And he's never really been in too much trouble in a fight. | ||
| You know, I look at his style. | ||
| He's one of those guys. | ||
| He's one of the very first guys. | ||
| He's really what got me into the sport. | ||
| Because I saw his fight with BJ and I just, I can see it. | ||
| I'm like, this guy is, you know, he's smart. | ||
| He's approaching it smart, like a true athlete, you know, like a true artist, like a true athlete. | ||
| There are people that do it too, you know, Demetrius does too, but I just don't think... | ||
| Well, again, it's the level of competition that he faced. | ||
| I mean, George faced some seriously stiff competition. | ||
| Not that Demetrius didn't. | ||
| I mean, he fought Dominic Cruz. | ||
| He's fought some tough guys. | ||
| I was really looking forward to Demetrius versus TJ. I know they were trying to put that together. | ||
| That would have been the one. | ||
| It still might be the one. | ||
| They might still do it. | ||
| I mean, if TJ can defeat Cody, or even if he doesn't, and if he decides to go down to 25, he can make it, he says. | ||
| He says he can make it. | ||
| Yeah, I think he can. | ||
| And I think he can give him some real problems. | ||
| Oh, it'll be the biggest fight of his life. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| I mean, he's fast. | ||
| He hits hard. | ||
| He knocks guys out at 35. What the fuck is he going to do to people at 25 if his body will stay healthy with that weight cut? | ||
| And you know as good as anybody that that's very difficult to do because you just feel weaker. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, there's that. | ||
| I know the guys that he trains down in South California with the training lab. | ||
| And that man approaches it like a scientist, for real. | ||
| I think he's a mathematician over at UC Berkeley. | ||
| A genius guy. | ||
| I sat down with him for about... | ||
| We talked for maybe about five, six hours. | ||
| It was mostly him just talking. | ||
| And me just sitting there absorbing all the shit that he could tell me about, you know... | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I mean, he measures those guys to a T. So if he feels like... | ||
| Wait a minute, who's training with him? | ||
| Dillashaw. | ||
| And is he a strength and conditioning guy? | ||
| Yeah, Sam Calvito, if I'm saying that right, Sam Calvito, down at training lab. | ||
| Brilliant, brilliant, man. | ||
| He's one of the very few guys that I think, in MMA especially, that really, he trained a lot of, he trains David Taylor, a lot of the U.S. Olympic wrestling team. | ||
| He worked with those guys for a long time. | ||
| Boy, you're seeing some mad scientists get into the game now, right? | ||
| When they're realizing there's real money in it. | ||
| This man is, what, 55, 56? | ||
| Does those Ironmans? | ||
| You know, where you gotta, like, I think it's like something crazy, like bike 120 miles, and then you swim 20 miles, and then you run a full marathon. | ||
| And he's doing it like 53, 54 years old. | ||
| I'm like, God. | ||
| I went over and trained with him before, and it's another level of strength and conditioning. | ||
| So if he says he can get TJ down to 25, I would think he can do it. | ||
| If he's confident in it, then he can do it in the right way. | ||
| Well, I spoke to TJ. He was 100% confident that he could make the weight. | ||
| You've got to also realize, DJ Demetrius just got shoulder surgery. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he's still rehabbing from that. | ||
| Who knows how long that's going to take. | ||
| I don't know how complex the shoulder surgery was. | ||
| Still interested in that fight. | ||
| It's a big one for Demetrius Johnson especially. | ||
| He needs that extra little pushover. | ||
| I was trying to give him some tips and tricks when we was doing the media tours together for 2016. No, not necessarily to talk shit, but he's not going to be able to come out and just talk shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it's not his style. | |
| It's not his style. | ||
| It don't work. | ||
| But to round out his game a little bit more, let's say that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, I know what you're saying. | |
| Because... | ||
| And I'm going to go back to the most well-rounded fighter. | ||
| You've got to be able to promote, too. | ||
| You've got to be able to see people want to see you fight, too. | ||
| And that thing is a stress. | ||
| It's a stressor on your training. | ||
| Like you said, you've got to get up at 6 a.m. | ||
| Because when you do it, you get more media requests. | ||
| So you get to have those interviews more. | ||
| And that's a stress. | ||
| And it's something that you, Baron, that your opponent don't necessarily have to. | ||
| A guy like Conor does a lot more media than his opponent do. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| It's a bigger stress. | ||
| If you can handle all those stresses and still go out there and compete, then if you shy away from that, I got to take that away from you as far as being the best power fighter. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| But if it's not Demetrius, then who the fuck is it other than George? | ||
| And George isn't really fighting. | ||
| Then it's John Jones. | ||
| It's for sure John Jones. | ||
| John's not really fighting right now either. | ||
| Oh, you're saying right now in the sports? | ||
| It's hard because John, I mean... | ||
| It's up there. | ||
| I don't think John took PEDs. | ||
| People give me a hard time about that. | ||
| I don't think he did. | ||
| I think he took something tainted just based on what USADA has said about the levels pre and post-test. | ||
| I think he fucked up and took something. | ||
| I fucked that money up, man. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I was rooting for him, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But he could still come back. | |
| And be much bigger. | ||
| You know, like I said, controversy. | ||
| Especially when you're black in America, controversy is one of the best things that can happen to you, really. | ||
| Well, John, when he's loose, when him and Daniel were in that press conference and Daniel was talking shit, he goes, I beat you after I did cocaine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| When John's just himself, I mean, he's huge. | ||
| He's going to be the biggest. | ||
| He could have already been the biggest star if he'd just been himself from the beginning. | ||
| If they don't really suspend him for very long and he comes back within a few months, it's entirely possible that he could come back and be the biggest still of all time. | ||
| I think he's going to be way bigger, especially after, like I said, controversy is a great one when you're black in America. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| Well, it's not just that. | ||
| It's like for John, like how much more focus will the – I mean, my fear is that he's going to somehow or another sabotage again and that this is not just – that these lessons aren't sinking in. | ||
| Because there's been so many of them. | ||
| The car accident where the, you know, broke the lady's arm and she's pregnant. | ||
| He runs away. | ||
| And then slamming the car into the tree. | ||
| There was so many. | ||
| And then there's, you know, the first test positive and then the second test positive. | ||
| Like, fuck the brawl at the press conference. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| It's like there's so many things. | ||
| I think that goes back to, you know, not being delusional and having the right team around you and somebody that you really listen to. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That you really, truly listen to. | ||
| You know, not just somebody that you just kind of, all right, yeah, I hear you. | ||
| Because it's easy to get that way. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| Like, and I've approached it a couple of times. | ||
| You know, you get that, especially when you got that confidence in the thing that made you great in the first place. | ||
| It can be like a hindrance to you, too. | ||
| And I think a lot of it has been, or at least a lot of my growth in the past couple months has been me getting in my own head and understanding it and kind of breaking it down. | ||
| You know, smoking weed helps. | ||
| I ain't gonna lie to you. | ||
| I ain't gonna lie to you. | ||
| Thank God it's legal now. | ||
| Yeah, I didn't start until after my loss to Leonardo. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, first time that I did. | ||
| But honestly, it was probably like the best thing to get. | ||
| Because I was angry at the fight. | ||
| I was angry at everything. | ||
| You know, I was like, fuck, how can I, you know, this guy, I was like a 10 to 1 favorite going into that fight. | ||
| That was the one fight that I never saw. | ||
| I was like, I'm going to smoke him. | ||
| So I just had this anger. | ||
| And the only way I saw my dad kind of deal with it was alcohol. | ||
| So I kind of turned to that and, you know, that is no good. | ||
| It's the worst way to do it. | ||
| Worst way to do it. | ||
| It just makes the delusions bigger. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| It just makes you angrier and it just kind of compounded everything. | ||
| But honestly, like when I smoked weed, it was like, because at that point I was like, you know what? | ||
| I had tuned it out for so long because that's what folks did that I kind of associated with being lazy and not successful and, you know, these fucking... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Me too. | |
| You know, I don't want to be these niggas on the corner. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| But when I did, it kind of opened up the anger towards myself. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It kind of opened up my mind for the first time and I think that actually did have a lot of help with it. | ||
| You know, I don't like chronic or nothing, but, you know, I know what you're saying. | ||
| I think that's what people are afraid of with it, too, is that paranoia. | ||
| I always say paranoia is just you looking at things realistically. | ||
| And even the possibilities of things happening realistically. | ||
| I mean, some people, for sure, if they have tendencies to be schizophrenic in particular, and then they smoke a lot of weed, it could spiral them. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Smoking too much of anything is not a good idea. | ||
| Doing too much of any one thing is not a good idea. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| You have to be able to balance. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You can't just fucking sit on the couch all day. | ||
| But I'm glad that you're saying that there's a real benefit to it too. | ||
| There's a benefit to it mentally in exposing that vulnerability and just making you aware of who you really are. | ||
| Like maybe to other people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We all, especially men, I think we puff our chests up and we like to look at ourselves as maybe better than we really are because it's like a shield, like a false confident shield that you put up to protect yourself from your vulnerability. | ||
| But marijuana says, no, no, no, fuck that. | ||
| Why don't you just look at whatever the fuck you're vulnerable and stop doing that, stupid. | ||
| Like, this is your problem. | ||
| This is what you're scared of. | ||
| You're like, shit, the weed's right. | ||
| It can help you. | ||
| Yeah, and it kind of... | ||
| Like I said, especially after that fight, I remember it. | ||
| That really made me... | ||
| That really helped me to get over it. | ||
| And not just get over it, but to understand it. | ||
| And understand what I was doing. | ||
| Because again, you just don't... | ||
| You know, you get that... | ||
| Them hormones. | ||
| Maybe it's testosterone. | ||
| You get that fucking pumping. | ||
| You just don't... | ||
| You know, you don't give a fuck. | ||
| That's part of it for sure. | ||
| You know, it's just... | ||
| It's also think about what you're doing for a living, man. | ||
| It's the most... | ||
| One of the most risky propositions you could do as a human being outside of war. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That too. | ||
| That too. | ||
| And I took that into, you know, you obviously take that into consideration when you start doing something like this. | ||
| I've taken into consideration every fight. | ||
| You know, one slip up, you could be, you know, bad news. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| One injury could take you out forever. | ||
| Especially when I was in my situation, even when I was signing with the UFC, it was like, okay, do I go and try and be a doctor? | ||
| I was going into bio, man. | ||
| That seemed more secure. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That seemed more obtainable, easier. | ||
| Or do I throw caution to the wind? | ||
| At the time, when I was 18 or 19, that was one of those ones that was hard for me to make. | ||
| It turned out well, I guess. | ||
| Well, you know, you're going to have more than one interest, too. | ||
| That's also part of the problem. | ||
| There's a lot of people out there that like doing different things, and you might be leaning more towards one than the other, and you just got to kind of soul search. | ||
| And nobody can answer that other than you. | ||
| That's why it's terrible when people tell people what to do. | ||
| When people tell people what you need to do is get a good job, or you need to go with something that's going to be saved. | ||
| Go with what's attainable. | ||
| Go with that. | ||
| You know, like, man, that's not right. | ||
| Everybody's different. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I think that's the, that's, I mean, to go back just to Rob, that's, that's what he did so well. | ||
| He didn't, he didn't tell me what to do. | ||
| He just showed me the truth, kind of. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He just, he was that voice in my, it was like the conscious. | ||
| And I mean, and your show too, like you do a good, you do a great job of it. | ||
| And I mean, I know you've heard it before, like, but you just are very truthful in what you say. | ||
| And instead of being like, Preachy, because nobody listens to fucking preachy, you know what I mean? | ||
| Preachy is usually, well, I try not to be, but sometimes it comes off, maybe sounding preachy if you don't know me, but it's just honest. | ||
| And that, you know, there's, what you say about Robert, one of the most important things about it is that he shows you. | ||
| He's just showing you, and you can trust him. | ||
| Those two things are very important. | ||
| Someone who just show you things, show you what's wrong, and that you can trust. | ||
| He's not bullshitting you. | ||
| As soon as you think that someone is bullshitting you, or bullshitting themselves, or being deluded, you're like, fuck, man, I can't. | ||
| Because they might have good information about other things. | ||
| That's a real problem. | ||
| When someone's an idiot, but also a genius. | ||
| Like, that exists. | ||
| There's people out there, and those people, that's a fucking puzzle. | ||
| You gotta go, okay, how much of this dude, what he's saying is stupid? | ||
| How much of what he's saying is genius? | ||
| And sometimes it's a weird mixture. | ||
| Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that I'm learning, especially as I'm kind of going forward, because you get to meet so many people, and so many people want to be a friend. | ||
| All of a sudden, there's so many people. | ||
| Everybody's got their... | ||
| Want to tell you how to do your job. | ||
| Everybody want to tell me how to fight and everybody want to tell me what to do and how to do that. | ||
| Some people really know what they're talking about, actually, though. | ||
| So you have to be able to, you know, I think you got to find that your little bullshit meter in there and kind of pick it apart. | ||
| For me, Rob was that. | ||
| But the shit that he still says is, you know... | ||
| I mean, you could get information on how to fight from your yoga instructor. | ||
| She could say something to you, and that one thing would just sit in your head. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Yeah, I had a girl named Yuko, a little Japanese girl, that was giving me privates in yoga. | ||
| But the way she broke it down was like anatomy, almost. | ||
| She knew the exact... | ||
| You know, position that I was here instead of being here where I was losing my balance or I was losing some of my power or it was putting more strain on one area than the other and making it harder. | ||
| And I'm just like, this translates so well, you know? | ||
| Even when I do ballet, it's like... | ||
| I can see when I'm off balance. | ||
| As one of the things in ballet, as you're spinning, keep your eyes on there so you don't get dizzy. | ||
| So even when Barbosa kicked me, I just made sure. | ||
| I saw four of them, but I'm like, let me keep my eyes on this motherfucker. | ||
| He's like... | ||
| Stay on of it, but it all translates because it's all the human body. | ||
| It's all the same thing. | ||
| It's just different ways of expressing the way your body moves and what it does, but it's the same shit. | ||
| It's only one. | ||
| It's like a giant computer. | ||
| And I would think that learning all these different ways to move would just enhance your overall understanding of how your body works. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, and it makes you I think it like makes you more in tune with it to you know to make it healthy That's one of the biggest keys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's just being as healthy as as possible and not You know tampering with that too much for sure and also flexibility I think having flexibility is so important for a fighter You know being able to move your body. | |
| There's some people that just aren't flexible They just can't move in certain ways and you know I can tell from watching you throw head kicks in that fight like you're flexible and You don't have a lot of tension in your legs when you're doing that. | ||
| I think tension is the perfect word for it, really, because that's what causes you to tighten, too. | ||
| When a guy, it's difficult for him to throw a body kick, and you see him kind of leaning, and you see that stroke. | ||
| I love Dan Henderson. | ||
| Big fan. | ||
| That dude looks like he can't even touch his toes. | ||
| Yeah, not at all. | ||
| When he threw a head kick in the Hector Lombard fight, I was like, holy shit! | ||
| But it's the way he threw it, it's like his whole body has to cock sideways. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It takes a lot of images. | |
| Whereas some people throw head kicks and you don't even see it coming. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, and also in grappling, too. | ||
| You know, you have to be able to have strength, I think, in every direction. | ||
| Yeah, that's one of the biggest reason why I don't lift weights is because you get so used to in that one Uniform direction that's interesting you have to be able to move I have to be just as strong here as I am here as I am there You know, do you get all your resistance from just grappling or from these these calisthenics and plyometrics and different Grappling a lot. | ||
| You know, yeah, I just pick guys up and put them down So that's a lot of body weight - so that's 100% exercise Now, do they concentrate on specific core exercises, or do you have days where you concentrate on just using your legs? | ||
| Yeah, different days, depending. | ||
| We do do a lot of core stuff, especially recently. | ||
| Probably the last year or so, we've been doing a lot more with the core. | ||
| Legs is a huge one. | ||
| Your legs carry you pretty much the whole way. | ||
| Do you run hills? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I live in Henderson, so it's like, you know... | ||
| Right, a lot of hills. | ||
| But legs is one of the biggest. | ||
| Just even my movement, like the way you move, too. | ||
| A lot of times I'll notice I'll be too, you know, up on the balls on my feet or I'll be too flat on my heels. | ||
| So, you know, I think that came from wrestling a little bit. | ||
| The stances are different. | ||
| But it's just... | ||
| Rounding out me as an individual is going to round out me as a fighter, which is just going to make it bigger and better. | ||
| Do you watch fights outside of MMA? Do you watch kickboxing? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| What do you like to watch? | ||
| Love them. | ||
| I mean, I watch a lot of the big boxing fights, especially. | ||
| I barely—I only got to see, like, little clips and pieces of the Broner and— I was paying more attention to his arguments with that rapper kid, that 6ix9ine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Jamie and I were going back and forth. | ||
| What the fuck is wrong with Adrian Broner that he's entertaining this the week of the fight, talking shit on Instagram? | ||
| I think they were just doing their thing, making media. | ||
| I think it was bullshit because he came out to 6ix9ine's song and then 6ix9ine kind of shouted it out for him. | ||
| Adrian Broner came out to 6ix9ine's song? | ||
| Yeah, he came out to the song during the fight. | ||
| I haven't seen the video yet. | ||
| I gotta go back and listen. | ||
| Yeah, go on 6ix9ine's Instagram. | ||
| He posted it up. | ||
| That is hilarious. | ||
| So 6ix9ine changed his tune, now he likes Broner? | ||
| I mean, look at it. | ||
| He was shouting, go Broner. | ||
| That's actually a smart move for Broner. | ||
| I mean, they did their thing. | ||
| That's a smart move, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He actually, you know, Broner's a... | |
| I mean, he did his thing in that fight, too. | ||
| He outworked Jesse Vargas. | ||
| That's hard to do. | ||
| I heard he beat the hell out of him after eight rounds. | ||
| He beat the hell out of him for the last four. | ||
| I have to watch it. | ||
| I got to record it at home. | ||
| I wanted to watch your fight and Frankie's fight and David Branch, man. | ||
| Knocking out Tiago Santos like that. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| Branch is tough. | ||
| He's a bad motherfucker, dude. | ||
| People sleep on branch because he lost to Luke Rockhold. | ||
| Luke Rockhold is a fucking beast. | ||
| Especially on top. | ||
| Oh, his top game is brutal. | ||
| He got Weidman down on the ground. | ||
| By the way... | ||
| Luke Rockhold, when he fought Weidman, had staph. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, he was going through his fucking antibiotics. | ||
| He was two weeks out. | ||
| He's in serious fucking IV antibiotics, the whole deal. | ||
| He was really hurting. | ||
| Man, and that's no joke. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| After that fight with Tony, I was out for six weeks. | ||
| I couldn't do anything. | ||
| I was... | ||
| I got staph twice, but I got it once and they caught it real early when I got it. | ||
| The second time barely even affected me because it caught it so early. | ||
| But the first time I got it, I got on the heavy medication and man, I was like... | ||
| Dizzy. | ||
| And I wasn't even training. | ||
| I stopped training after I got on the medication. | ||
| I just hung around. | ||
| And I was just like, Jesus, the first couple of days on the medication, I'm dizzy. | ||
| I'm like, I feel terrible. | ||
| It destroys your body. | ||
| I mean, especially when you talk to so many microbiologists that tell you what it does to the gut florist. | ||
| I didn't know back then either. | ||
| I got it back in like 2002. I didn't know shit about gut flora back then. | ||
| I literally didn't know what it was. | ||
| So I just took the medication, just ate what I always ate, and took some vitamins like I always did, and that was it. | ||
| But I was like, wow, I'm like lightheaded. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, no, it's no joke. | ||
| You know, the body, it's... | ||
| That shit scares the fuck out of me. | ||
| MRSA and staff and those fucking infections, they scare the shit out of me, man. | ||
| Yeah, anything from within you, it's kind of scary, yeah. | ||
| It's just, those fucking little monsters just want to take over your body and eat it. | ||
| You know, that's what it is. | ||
| There's more of them than there are of us. | ||
| I mean, there's more bacteria in your body than there are human cells. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think about. | ||
| But it just... | ||
| It's all about balance. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Are you careful with your diet? | ||
| Do you take in a lot of probiotics? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Especially when I'm in camp, I'm very, very careful. | ||
| What do you eat? | ||
| Recently, I've been going a lot more keto. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| I still eat carbs, obviously, because I have to to have that explosion still, I feel like. | ||
| I just think you have to eat more carbs and you probably still stay ketogenic. | ||
| I think that when people look at carbs and they say, like, you only have 25 to 50 grams of carbs during the day, that's great if you're not doing two-a-days and fucking wrestling and running hills and shit. | ||
| Your body probably needs more carbohydrates than that. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, definitely. | ||
| And that's kind of where I try and supplement it, especially before I try and eat more carbs. | ||
| And then I kind of cut them back towards the end of the days. | ||
| What are you eating? | ||
| A lot of chickens. | ||
| Because I can't eat fish or shellfish. | ||
| Are you allergic to it? | ||
| Yeah, completely. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Are you allergic to lobster? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Shit! | ||
| I mean, I just convinced myself it tastes like shit anyway. | ||
| Oh, but it doesn't. | ||
| I mean, I can look at it. | ||
| Lobster with melted butter? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh! | |
| Tastes like melted butter, huh? | ||
| Oh, it's so good. | ||
| Lobster with melted butter. | ||
| I'll just eat the melted butter on some grass-fed steak. | ||
| Well, that's pretty fucking good, too. | ||
| I love to cook, too. | ||
| Do you? | ||
| I love to cook. | ||
| I mean, I think there's a real art to cooking, too. | ||
| That could probably be me in another life. | ||
| A chef? | ||
| You were saying that. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| It's a heart to it, right? | ||
| Yeah, I would love to. | ||
| Eventually, maybe. | ||
| I cook a lot. | ||
| I love cooking. | ||
| It makes me feel good, man. | ||
| I like knowing that I prepared a meal. | ||
| Put it together, it's a nice thing, especially if it's healthy. | ||
| And especially when you... | ||
| I don't get people that are... | ||
| I mean, I don't want to say I don't get vegans. | ||
| Like, I have a lot of friends that are vegan, and, you know, I never kind of doubt. | ||
| But the fact that they don't want to eat meat for... | ||
| There are certain people, like my brother tried to do this, too. | ||
| He's like, he don't want to eat meat because he's, like, afraid of the animal, you know, or... | ||
| Feel bad for the animals. | ||
| You said it. | ||
| We've got more not-us-cells than we do-us-cells. | ||
| We're all the same shit. | ||
| Even the animals, we are the same. | ||
| They're the same as the plants, too. | ||
| I don't want animal cruelty. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| The most noble aspects of becoming a vegan is to avoid animal cruelty and factory farming. | ||
| And I think that in that way, I agree with them. | ||
| The real problem with vegans is that There's a certain percentage of them that are just fucking idiots. | ||
| And it's just a certain percentage of any group of people. | ||
| It's not most vegans. | ||
| Most vegans are kind people. | ||
| It's a certain percentage of them that are using being a vegan as an excuse to be a fucking asshole. | ||
| And that's what it is. | ||
| And they have this thing. | ||
| And most of them use vegan in their screen name. | ||
| They always have like... | ||
| Veganism? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, vegans are part of their identity, and then they attack people who aren't vegans. | ||
| There's a few people that I follow that I literally go to their Twitter page and just watch them attack people who aren't vegans. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to watch. | ||
| It's just like, that's all they do. | ||
| And like you said, that's why I don't want to say, like, I don't understand vegans, because that's just people in general. | ||
| You're going to get that at any walk. | ||
| People are going to be fucking idiots, isn't it? | ||
| It's almost like, when I've said that veganism is sort of a religion, it's an ideology in the sense of the way some people practice it, that they want to go after. | ||
| There's some people that are Catholic that hate Protestants, right? | ||
| They think the Protestants are the enemy. | ||
| And this is just, I mean, this is obviously something that went on for a long time in human history. | ||
| But I think it's just... | ||
| Groups of people get real tribal. | ||
| And then, you know, the fucking Yankees hate the Red Sox, and this is just how it goes. | ||
| And these people just decide that you're on the other team, so fuck you. | ||
| And no one can see any middle ground. | ||
| You know, there's this guy from this restaurant, Antler from Toronto, that I had on last week. | ||
| And these people are protesting his restaurant, these vegans. | ||
| I've seen that. | ||
| Yeah, I've thought of it. | ||
| And then they want him to put a sign in the window saying something like, no animals should die so that we live and it's not our right to take their lives. | ||
| And so they protest every week until he does this. | ||
| Well, he's not going to do that. | ||
| So what the fuck are you doing? | ||
| What is this? | ||
| It's just assholes. | ||
| There's a battle. | ||
| It's just assholes. | ||
| There's an ideological battle going on. | ||
| It's not a well-examined, objective thing, in my opinion. | ||
| Yeah, but it's so natural, though. | ||
| Like you said, it's almost like communities. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| You have your thoughts, I've got my thoughts, and we are part of two separate communities. | ||
| And it's just like with anything else. | ||
| I think that integration between the two and that balance is the most key to everybody, really. | ||
| It kind of will grow everybody. | ||
| The bounty hunters can learn something from the vegans just as much as the vegans can learn from the bounty hunters. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Oh, I think so, too. | ||
| And I think that... | ||
| Really, the problem is when people don't want to hear the other side, they want to shout people down, they're not willing to listen, and there's common ground across the board. | ||
| And some of it probably is just learned, I think, a lot about how you grew up, and I think it's important to understand that. | ||
| Like I said, just to go back to my childhood, that's the way I grew up, and that's what I understood, but when I look at... | ||
| Like my dad. | ||
| My dad didn't have his dad. | ||
| And he was out the house by 15. And I try and put myself there sometimes, being a 15-year-old kid that didn't have a place to go. | ||
| Like, what are you going to do? | ||
| And the only people you see around you is drug dealers. | ||
| So, like a lot of it, I give credit to him for sticking around for me because I would have no... | ||
| I would be hitting people over time to hit. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And that's why people do it. | ||
| Because those people that are doing that are just like you and me. | ||
| Everybody's... | ||
|
unidentified
|
100%. | |
| We're all just human beings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| We vary genetically, but we vary more by our environment and how much love we get. | ||
| That's a big part of it. | ||
| It's just the culture. | ||
| I think it stems from one culture being separated from others. | ||
| And not having that integration, then you get that, like, even more of a disconnect. | ||
| And then once you get even bigger, then, you know, it's all, like, downhill. | ||
| And you get more insecurity, which leads to more tribalism. | ||
| And the whole thing is just, it's so disappointing that people still operate like this. | ||
| But I think people are opening up to that more now than before. | ||
| I just think it's a slow process. | ||
| Yeah, slowly but surely. | ||
| Slowly but surely. | ||
| We're still working at it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look at what, you know, we were talking before about the Rosa Parks picture out there. | ||
| That wasn't that long ago, man. | ||
| No, no, it really wasn't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was not that long ago. | |
| No, it really wasn't. | ||
| And that'd be the thing. | ||
| There's certain white people, too, that just be like, all right, just get over it already. | ||
| And it's like, come on. | ||
| Because they didn't have to get over it. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| You don't understand it. | ||
| They didn't experience it. | ||
| And you don't even, like, take the time to try and understand. | ||
| Well, they're tribal, too. | ||
| They talk to other people that say the same shit. | ||
| And, like, yeah, well... | ||
| And they'll just start rattling off statistics about the instances of crime in the black community and how the Asians don't do this, but the blacks do. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| It's fucking cultural. | ||
| If you don't think it's cultural, you haven't been around enough people. | ||
| And it does not go back a lot of generations. | ||
| Like you said, Rosa Parks was not very long ago. | ||
| My dad didn't have his dad. | ||
| He didn't have that person to teach him what not to do and what to do. | ||
| That's a hard road, especially for a young... | ||
| Like you go back earlier, young guys get delusional real quick. | ||
| They feel invincible. | ||
| They feel like, oh, I can do this and I'm never going to get caught. | ||
| You don't have that voice of reason to tell you... | ||
| Right from wrong when you're that kind of age. | ||
| And it's because he didn't have his dad. | ||
| And then why didn't he have his dad? | ||
| Because he didn't have his dad. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And that only goes back two, three generations. | ||
| Well, what's crazy is you're talking about 1865 is when slavery was abolished. | ||
| So we're talking about a small amount of time in human history where there haven't been slaves. | ||
| So all your isolation when you felt as a kid, when you felt separate from the people that were in the miles that were higher than yours, think about That times a hundred is if you were a slave. | ||
| Maybe a million. | ||
| An insurmountable gap between a slave that has no chance of ever not being a slave and someone who can go to school wherever they want and travel abroad and do whatever the fuck they want. | ||
| The idea that some of these white people think that these people should just get over it. | ||
| The amount of time is so fucking short. | ||
| You're talking about... | ||
| We just had Black Panther. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We just had Black Panther. | |
| At least it beat Avatar. | ||
| It's beaten everything so far. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Isn't it like one of the number one biggest movies of all time? | |
| That should help. | ||
| Believe it or not. | ||
| I really think things like that will help. | ||
| It was a beautiful movie and it was a beautiful movie to describe even like... | ||
| When you say 1865, I feel like we're so disconnected from even that. | ||
| And this is, I've talked to a lot of people about this, the difference between being called a black American and an African American. | ||
| You know, I hate being called an African American. | ||
| That's what everybody says. | ||
| I know. | ||
| What bothers it? | ||
| To me, it makes you seem, because you put me and Francis next to each other, Francis is an African American. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I see what you're saying. | ||
| He's from Africa. | ||
| He has ties to Africa. | ||
| You know who else is an African American? | ||
| Elon Musk. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, yeah. | ||
| For real. | ||
| But I think even more now, it kind of like... | ||
| Why can't we be... | ||
| Black comes in so many different shades. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| As does African, obviously. | ||
| So maybe black Americans is a better way to put it. | ||
| But Africans have ties to Africa. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Where it's not slavery. | ||
| I feel we should have our ties in America. | ||
| I should be proud to just be an American, not be called an African American. | ||
| Well, it's with every generation. | ||
| I mean, it's going to take a long time before we just abandon all this nonsense and just treat people based on who they are as a human being. | ||
| But my grandparents came from Italy and they were treated like dog shit. | ||
| I mean, my grandfather always talked about the racism that he encountered when he came over. | ||
| From Italy to America, and they didn't think of Italians as white people. | ||
| Now, they think of Italians as white people. | ||
| 100%, yeah. | ||
| And Mexicans are experiencing that. | ||
| Like, you know, if you're from Spain, you're basically white. | ||
| Like, nobody thinks of a guy from Spain as being, like, you don't think of them the same way you think of Mexicans. | ||
| But one day, all that shit will go away. | ||
| One day we'll get past this, whether it's... | ||
| Who knows how many generations it'll take, but I think it's changing now because of the internet. | ||
| I think there's definitely more hate groups that consolidate, and they get together, and they live in an echo chamber online. | ||
| They talk, and they agree with each other. | ||
| You see it on Twitter, and Twitter's trying to stop that, and maybe that's misguided because maybe it strengthens it, but I think that ultimately... | ||
| This ability to exchange information is gonna allow more and more people to compare notes and understand that there's no benefit to thinking of people as being inferior or superior or better or worse. | ||
| We're just all different, but we're all human. | ||
| We're all just human. | ||
| We're all the same. | ||
| Really, you see that when you see people. | ||
| You can really see somebody. | ||
| When you really know them. | ||
| You really see them. | ||
| We're literally all the same. | ||
| But all different, too, because that's one of the beautiful things is that you see these little different aspects of individuals' personalities. | ||
| But to lump people in a group, oh, you're a Chinese guy. | ||
| I know what the fuck you are. | ||
| You're this. | ||
| Oh, you're an African guy. | ||
| I don't know who the fuck you are. | ||
| You're this. | ||
| No, that's nonsense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a broad spectrum in each and every classification, but at the end of the day, we're all the same thing, because we're all just people. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| I mean, it's just, when you talk about having, like, pride in it, I feel like it helps a little bit more if I identify as a black American, you know, instead of like an African American. | ||
| I see what you're saying. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I feel like it's a little more... | ||
| You know, I just look different. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I'm more integrated, and it would give me more pride to be that. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And I think that's still... | ||
| We're obviously all the same, and there needs to be integration, but you still have to have some type of identity. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| And I think the movie in itself did a good job. | ||
| I just went back to Black Panther. | ||
| I think it did a great job in describing the differences between the Black community and the African community. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Or Africa itself. | ||
| Because you get that anger. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's like the stereotype is like the angry black man, but some of it stems from not knowing where you're from and not having that core identity. | ||
| And I feel like we can just do that again here in America as black Americans instead of... | ||
| Yeah, I hope what it represents is a meter to register that racism is dying. | ||
| And that this is also people... | ||
| And there's a lot of white people that are really going way out of their way to go see it because they wanted to show everybody that they're not racist. | ||
| But I think that's good too. | ||
| I think ultimately it's showing that this is something that people recognize as a stupid problem and we should get past it. | ||
| It took goddamn long enough. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It took long enough. | |
| But it's not done. | ||
| We're probably going to be telling this to our grandchildren someday. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| And they're still going to be experiencing some of it. | ||
| And then there's going to be something new comes out, and you're like, God damn, are we just now doing this? | ||
| That's the way it's just going to be. | ||
| But for me, personally, it's just... | ||
| Because every kid wants to be a superhero. | ||
| There wasn't a whole lot of them. | ||
| You could be half vampire and be Blade. | ||
| Yeah, but Blade was like a hitman. | ||
| It goes back to what you see around me. | ||
| If I only see the drug dealers and every... | ||
| There was never a black superhero. | ||
| And I was like, alright, well shit, alright. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can hang up there. | |
| And it portrayed us as scientists. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you're one of those white, get over it guys. | |
| That doesn't register for you because they're all white. | ||
| Every fucking superhero. | ||
| Batman, Spider-Man. | ||
| Even the Hulk is white at first. | ||
| And I get it from a lot of I mean, it's just culture. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And it's not better or worse than one thing or another. | ||
| You know, there's Hawaiian culture. | ||
| It's just culture. | ||
| And that needs to be celebrated, too, because the more you celebrate culture, the more you can integrate between... | ||
| All of them. | ||
| Right, and then there's the real problem. | ||
| I don't want those cultures to go away. | ||
| I was in Chinatown in Boston this weekend. | ||
| We went and ate dinner at 2 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| It's a Chinese restaurant. | ||
| It's Chinatown, right, Jamie? | ||
| That place was Chinatown. | ||
| They got fucking Alaskan king crabs in a fish tank. | ||
| How the fuck did you even get that here? | ||
| It's still alive. | ||
| All these fish on top of each other. | ||
| They pull the fish out of the tank and cook it up for you. | ||
| I mean, it's like... | ||
| They barely speak English. | ||
| I mean, this is their culture. | ||
| And I want that to still exist, too. | ||
| You know, I mean, I just want them to be accepted. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I mean, and that's the beauty about it, and I think you need to keep that alive. | ||
| You know, there's two different spectrums to it. | ||
| There's the person that's just like, oh, just go ahead and get over it. | ||
| And there's this person that's just like, okay, well, you don't even have... | ||
| Like, they don't want even, like, I didn't... | ||
| Acknowledge your culture, you know what I mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They just want to like just shun it or just not, you know, just put it in the closet somewhere and you know that that's Almost the it's the opposite, but it's just as bad I was talking to a buddy mine who lives on the Big Island about that He's a white guy and he lives in Hawaii and he grew up in Hawaii And I said did you experience a lot of racism against white people? | |
| He's like no because I'm not a fucking asshole And I said, that's what it is, right? | ||
| He's like, yeah, man. | ||
| He goes, you can't be a white guy coming over here trying to push your mainland culture. | ||
| He's like, this is the fucking culture, dude. | ||
| He goes, if you just accept the culture the way it is out here, he goes, they're not racist. | ||
| They'll take you. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| You're going to run into a few, but for the most part... | ||
| You're gonna run into a few everywhere you go. | ||
| Go back to it. | ||
| People are fucking idiots in every walks of it. | ||
| But for the most part, as long as you're not an asshole, you're good. | ||
| It's the same way across the board. | ||
| I've kind of realized that as I'm getting older. | ||
| Because before, I just thought, you know, we just... | ||
| What we are. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I've got family members that only will ever see Detroit. | ||
| They will only ever see those same blocks. | ||
| They will only ever see the same people. | ||
| And that's just what you think it is. | ||
| And it's just like, no, there's so much more. | ||
| And it's not that different. | ||
| Like, you think it's different. | ||
| It's different, but you know what I'm saying? | ||
| It's not alien. | ||
| It's just different. | ||
| It's not better, it's not worse. | ||
| One of the things that I really enjoyed about traveling so much with the UFC is you got to see all these different cultures and you got to see all these different styles of life that these people live in. | ||
| And you kind of put it all together and it just gives you... | ||
| I think it's one of the best things about traveling is that it gives you this more rounded perspective. | ||
| If you lived in Italy, you'd be like one of these people. | ||
| This is how they live. | ||
| They live like this. | ||
| If you lived in Dublin, you'd be like this. | ||
| This is their style of living. | ||
| Yeah, and it's important to acknowledge, I think, all those different styles, too, you know, of living. | ||
| And I think if you really want to like cure racism in America and all that, it's just being open about it and just talking and, you know, people understanding other people's upbringings and what they went through and what they do, because that makes you understand it more. | ||
| If you try and just shun it away or just say, if you even bring up the word black or white or anything like people get, you know, you kind of see it sometimes people get tense and it's just like, just be honest about it and just be open about it. | ||
| and that will make it go away. | ||
| It's It's not, you know, shun it and it'll go away. | ||
| Some people don't want to be uncomfortable. | ||
| They don't want to talk about uncomfortable shit. | ||
| So if something comes up that's like, well, you know, as a black man, you're like, oh, here we go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here we go. | |
| I didn't do it, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I never had a slave, okay? | |
| And you're like, oh, alright, man. | ||
| You're just super uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. | ||
| Yeah, it's like, what for? | ||
| I think that makes you more the asshole there. | ||
| Well, if you're talking to a human being, if you really want to have a conversation with them, you want to know their actual experience. | ||
| And if their experience is as a Puerto Rican that came from Puerto Rico, a lot of Puerto Ricans feel super disconnected with the United States because they're not really United States citizens, but they are. | ||
| It's like a weird thing. | ||
| It's kind of like it's not really a state, but it's sort of protected by the United States, and so they're disconnected. | ||
| On the East Coast, growing up with Puerto Ricans, they have a weird alienation. | ||
| If you don't want to talk to them and you don't want to hear about that from them, that's fine, but you're just going to miss out on that part of what life is for them. | ||
| You're never going to get it. | ||
| Yeah, and all the things that they bring to it, and the food that they bring, the different arts. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| The different styles of fighting that they bring, the different dances. | ||
| Everything about the culture, you're going to miss if you try and just shy away from it. | ||
| Mixed martial arts is a perfect example of all these different cultures coming together in this one boiling pot. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that's one of the most beautiful things about it. | ||
| I can go over to Ireland and fight a Russian in Ireland, and it's different than going down to Brazil and fighting a Brazilian, or something like that. | ||
| But at the core of it, it's fighting. | ||
| It's just different styles of being able to do it, but everybody does it. | ||
| What's crazy to me is how when you go to these other places like Brazil or Ireland or something like that, how rabid they are for their local people. | ||
| When you're fighting someone who's Brazilian in Brazil, I mean, maybe it's relaxed a little bit now, but I was there for some of the earlier UFCs there. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| And I made the mistake of flipping off the crowd at the weigh-ins. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Were you fighting down there? | |
| Francisco Trinaldo. | ||
| Three-time Brazilian kickboxing champion. | ||
| Monstrous. | ||
| That was at the height of his... | ||
| He was on a seven-fight win streak. | ||
| He was feeling good. | ||
| He was kind of at his last run, too. | ||
| He was in tough at a 185 pound, too. | ||
| It's a big 55er. | ||
| Hit like a truck, too. | ||
| But, you know, before the weigh-ins, they scream it, you're gonna die. | ||
| And I'm like, alright. | ||
| You know, I'm a shit-talker, so you talk that shit to me. | ||
| I'm giving it back to you. | ||
| Look, I'm loving it. | ||
| Look at Dewey, too. | ||
| I'm loving it, but they were rabid for that one. | ||
| People were throwing stuff at me as I was walking out. | ||
| I kind of just threw my headphones in and just went to town. | ||
| They got a lot of pride in Brazil, man. | ||
| They love it. | ||
| But around the world, a lot of the... | ||
| Because I think they truly... | ||
| Appreciate the art of what they do. | ||
| And it is a representation of the culture there. | ||
| For sure with Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| When they get somebody that's Damian Maia, they're going to stand behind that man because he represents the art of it. | ||
| Or just MMA in general. | ||
| They appreciate the art of it. | ||
| Russians appreciate the art of what they do. | ||
| The Sambo. | ||
| It's so deep-rooted in their culture. | ||
| And Americans do too. | ||
| For the most part, it's just... | ||
| We don't get as behind our own fighters, I think. | ||
| I think, yeah, we have a certain amount of loyalty, but this is such a goddamn ambitious country. | ||
| We love winning. | ||
| You gotta win. | ||
| Get some money, shine, talk some shit, and win. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Well, listen, man, you're doing all those things right now. | ||
| I'm trying to. | ||
| Slowly but surely. | ||
| I think this is a good conversation too because I think people understand you more now. | ||
| Get a better sense of who you are. | ||
| I got a couple of layers to me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You do. | |
| Thank you, Kevin. | ||
| I really appreciate it, man. | ||
| I really enjoyed this conversation. | ||
| Alright, that's it, fuckers. |
Export Selection