Michael Chandler, Bellator’s 155-pound star, dissects his three-fight losing streak—split against Eddie Alvarez and two back-injury battles with Will Brooks—blaming self-doubt and mental lapses like overestimating his skills or neglecting visualization. His "mental highlight reels" of past wins (e.g., Kyler Sanderson at Mizzou) and DEXA-scan-backed strength training now fuel his resilience, though he criticizes Bellator’s lack of rematch opportunities despite its growth to Paramount Network. Chandler contrasts his evolved, footwork-driven style with Gaethje’s chaos-reliant approach, mocking leg-lock-heavy karate-style fights while praising his 9,000-square-foot Nashville gym—built by his father—as a future MMA hub. The episode underscores how mental discipline and strategic training, not just aggression, define elite fighters in an increasingly complex sport. [Automatically generated summary]
I know he did what he had to do, but even that one bums me out.
I want to see you fight the best guys in the world, and I think right now, over in Bellator, you have very good competition, but I don't think you have the best guys, and I think you're one of the best guys.
I mean, I've had some losses where I've, you know, had temporary lapses of confidence and whatnot, whether it be my training or my abilities in myself or my thoughts and my abilities in myself.
But, I mean, where I'm at right now, firing on all cylinders, I feel like everything's working.
Do you feel like those moments where you haven't been at your best, where you've had lapses, and then you felt those dark moments, do those motivate you to never let that happen again?
Yeah, I mean, I think I actually went through, for those of the people that don't know, I went through three losses in a row.
I mean, that's rough.
I mean, the first loss to Eddie Alvarez was a tough split decision.
A lot of people thought I won.
So you kind of get this, you know, oh, woe is me attitude, which I never had really had before.
And all of a sudden it's like, why did this happen to me?
Then had a back injury and then fought Will Brooks when I shouldn't have on one week, basically one week of training, which led to another loss, which led to another lack of confidence and then another loss.
So I went through that tough, dark time, you know, and I think there were certain aspects of it that it was me taking the sport for granted.
It was me taking my abilities for granted.
And also just not taking extreme ownership of my mental state.
Like realizing that I might be the hardest worker in the gym.
I am the hardest worker in the gym.
At every gym I go to I'm the hardest worker.
I live life right.
I do the right things.
But if you're not constantly taking extreme ownership of your mental state, of your confidence, your self-image, I think a healthy self-image is the most important component of being successful in life.
And I just, I wasn't taking care of that aspect of my life.
I mean, I think I had never visualized until after that.
I mean, honestly, I come from a hard-working My mom and dad both worked two jobs.
My dad was a union carpenter, woke up at five in the morning, every single morning pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
Mom the same way, working two, three jobs, both of them to make sure that me and my brothers had every single advantage in life, whether it be wrestling camps, football camps, this, that, the other thing.
But we weren't exactly taught that, hey, You can go out in the world and do great things.
You can go out and you can be not just good but great and be a champion.
And I think I went into college wrestling and I might have told the coaches I wanted to be a national champion.
I might have told the reporters, all the people that I was supposed to, that I wanted to be a national champion.
But in my heart of hearts, I didn't truly believe it.
And I was.
You asked Tyron, you asked Ben.
Those guys took me under their wing because I was the hardest worker in the room.
And they said, man, this guy could be good.
But I didn't exactly believe in myself.
And now it's taken me almost until I'm 30 years old to really truly believe that I was put on this earth.
To do some amazing things.
And that there is no limits on myself.
And that there is no limits to my capabilities and my abilities.
So, I mean, I think we underestimate how important and how mental life is.
And not just in athletics.
Not just in fighting.
Not just in sports.
But I mean, in anything.
In business.
And just being a good person.
Just believing in yourself and having a healthy self-image.
Well, I think, too, I mean, I'm very hard on myself, you know?
I mean, I think anybody who's successful is at least relatively hard on themselves, and I think I got to the point where I just started calling myself lazy.
You know, I wake up every morning And I think, Michael, you're being lazy if you don't do something today.
Listen to this podcast or watch this YouTube video or read this book or spend 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 30 minutes visualizing yourself.
In a cage or on a podium or having loads of wealth or having loads of influence, having loads of impact, having ridiculous amounts of success because until you actually see it in your mind's eye, you can't actually achieve it.
Or you're going to get to the point right on the cusp of about to be achieving it and you're going to have that cognitive dissonance where something pops up where you have the opportunity to break that barrier but you're going to find a way to sabotage yourself Because you don't truly believe that you deserve it.
And I did that numerous times in college.
There was times where I was beating top-ranked guys in the country and would somehow find a way to lose.
Because winning to me, being crazy successful to me, wasn't exactly...
It didn't exactly mesh with how I truly saw myself, you know?
And I think it's...
And I think I can look back on that, not with regret, but with that kind of...
I just educate myself.
And I look back and I can put myself at...
National duels against CP Slater, us versus Minnesota.
My team needed me to win.
He was ranked top five in the country.
I wasn't supposed to beat him.
I was up by two takedowns and somehow in the third period I lose the match.
And I can go back and see that in my mind and realize, okay, that was a time.
Let's respect that for what it is and let's use that as fuel for the future.
I mean, my loss to Eddie Alvarez was a lot of technical disappointment.
Things I did wrong technically.
Losses to Will Rooks were things I did wrong technically.
But mentally I wasn't there as well.
And then I came back with a vengeance and then won.
And now I've won six in my last seven.
The only loss was a crazy freak injury.
And now we can continue to move forward and just kind of look at it as an adult instead of take the emotion out of it and look at it A plus B equals C. So it's really kind of helped me.
I think for a lot of people who don't test themselves in such an extreme manner, I mean, I think MMA is probably one of the most extreme things you could do for a job other than being a soldier or a fireman or a police officer or something like that.
But it's this idea that you sabotage yourself because you can't imagine yourself winning.
Chael Sonnen talked about that quite a bit, about His fight with Anderson Silva, how he was dominating him, not kind of, but was dominating him, was very close to being the UFC middleweight champion, found a way to fall into a triangle.
And he had done that with Paulo Filho when he fought him, and there was this thing that he would do where he would find a way to fuck it up.
Even though you're there doing it, the pressure of possibly pulling it off was too overwhelming.
And all of a sudden, I think we all saw the triangle coming, too, you know?
Anderson, it seemed like he pushed the arm down real slow, and then all of a sudden he threw the leg over and we're all like, what are you doing?
And then, you know, then 30 seconds later, he's, you know, or 10 seconds later, the fight's over.
And I think it's your views or your beliefs not matching up with the reality.
And all of a sudden, there's that fine line between breaking that barrier and And unless you have been there before, unless, like I said, visualizing yourself extremely successful, extremely wealthy, someone to be looked at, someone to be admired, someone to follow, unless you see that, you're going to get to the point where you tell everybody you want the success, but you're not going to get it unless you 100% truly believe in it.
And it took me 30 years to figure it out, so anybody who's done that before, you know, it's okay.
It'll come with time, but you really have to, like I said, take extreme ownership Of inside your brain, between your ears is the most important part of life, as we've already said.
And you can continue to work hard.
And I go back to talking about being lazy.
I literally call myself lazy and shame myself.
Like, Michael, why didn't you do this today?
Why didn't you work on your mental health today, your self-image today?
Why didn't you visualize?
Why didn't you do that?
Because that's just like flexing a muscle in the gym, just like throwing a thousand repetitions, whether it be on the punching bag or drilling a wrestling move or a Or I take down, it's all the same stuff.
And arguably more important on the mental side of things than it is on the physical side of things.
And I think the biggest detriment to the people that work hard and expect a lot of themselves is when you have achievements, you don't take time to smell the roses.
You don't take time to pat yourself on the back.
You think that, okay, well, if I stop and I say, you know what, I am good.
Oh my gosh, I did do a great job.
Holy cow, I was dominant.
You're not supposed to do that because that's prideful and that's conceited and that's narcissistic.
But really, if you're not your biggest fan, who's going to be?
And I think that's what I always did.
I would accomplish something and I'd say, okay, well, I'm supposed to accomplish that.
You see one guy, pride comes before the fall, and then all of a sudden the fall happens, you say, okay, well, I don't want to do that.
But there is that fine line, that middle ground where it's like, it's okay to love yourself.
It's okay to look at yourself in the mirror and say, that man right there standing in front of me in the mirror is a badass, and you deserve to be extremely successful.
But then when you go out in the world, you don't walk around like you're better than people.
You don't walk around like, you know.
So, I mean, there is no, you know, Finite A plus B equals C type of way to live.
But there is that middle ground between being your biggest fan, taking time to stop and pat yourself on the back and realize your accomplishments, which the mental highlight reel thing is something great because you can go through 10 things in your past and just continue to remember those times where you were in your flow state, where you absolutely performed at a ridiculous level.
That you didn't, that you kind of surprised yourself almost.
And I think that continues to happen step by step and brick by boring brick.
You make these little bitty accomplishments and as long as you continue to remember them, you can continue to increase that confident capacity that you should have and start to go from, man, I didn't know I was capable of this, to now the confident expectancy of Okay, I said I deserve it, but now I really am starting to believe that I deserve it.
And then once you actually believe, then you get in those scenarios where it's you versus him and someone's got to win.
And that's things too that can be added to a mental highlight reel.
Like having a really great sparring day.
And then remembering what you had for breakfast.
Remembering how your day started.
Remember whether you did or did not watch TV before practice.
Or, you know...
Those little things and then and then I always talk about working extremely hard and surround yourself with the best people possible and that's why I've you know I moved out to Las Vegas right when I started fighting and then moved to San Diego and then move and then move my training camp to Arizona and then now Florida and now you know so I've moved all over the country to find the best guys I possibly can so when you have a great day like that Sit down with the coach and say,
hey coach, you know, talking to Henry or Evan or Kami or one of these guys that is coaching me right now and talk about it, like almost overly talk about it, which those guys are always annoying to me or they always used to be like, hey, I did this right and I did this right and I did this right because I always thought, well, you should just work.
You shouldn't talk, just work.
But I've started to realize that.
Those things need to be vocalized or they get swept under the rug and you forget that you had a great day.
So now we sit down and we talk and we say, hey man, that 3-2 was really working great off the faint.
We worked that yesterday as we were hitting mitts.
And now you're continuing to show yourself that this thing really actually does work.
You're not just working to work, you're working smart.
And then you see that working smart actually turns into results.
Working on these little experiments that you're that you're making and you're actually Collecting the data and seeing the results now when you're talking about doing a mental highlight reel thing is this sort of a rebuilding exercise a rebuilding confidence exercise or is this just a?
solidifying skill set and understanding your potential Because you've already done things before.
Because you were in a bad spot when you started doing this.
Is this when you started constructing this highlight reel thing?
And it was just a bunch of instances where they were talking about Tiger Woods.
They were talking about this guy or that guy.
And then one of the chapters was doing a mental highlight reel.
And I think it can be used for both.
I mean, you should do one today.
We should all do one today.
Whether you're in a great place, whether you just closed the biggest business deal you ever possibly could, or you just are down in the dumps because you feel like the biggest loser on earth.
You do a mental highlight reel.
It's just like going to the gym.
And then it changes.
Maybe this month, It's different than next month.
Maybe you wipe off an old one and you put on a brand new one that you just remembered.
Because sometimes we forget successes that we have.
It takes me going to my Wikipedia page or me going on some old interviews or somebody telling me on Twitter, hey, remember that time you did this?
For me to actually remember the successes that I've had because I've been conditioned To pull myself up by my bootstraps every single day and forget about all my accomplishments in my past because those don't matter.
Those are stumbling blocks because what got you here isn't going to get you where you want to go.
And we have that mentality, but you have to take the time to remember Almost look at yourself the way other people see you because we all are all our biggest critics You know the way my fans see me the way you watch me fight is and and the the way you see my abilities Is probably even better than I have seen myself a lot in my past from an outside perspective It's so much easier to look at someone outside perspective because our own inner monologue our own and our own self-image Dummies
down Who we are and how much we want to accomplish.
Not all of us.
I mean, there's a lot of people out there who are cocky, narcissistic people who think they are the...
It's a long time to question yourself every single day.
To wake up in the morning Wondering if you were going to have a paycheck.
Wondering if you were going to get a phone call from your manager.
Wondering if you really wanted to open up your phone and see all the negative comments that I told you Michael Chandler wasn't as good as we all thought he was.
Especially when you were a former champion and then you're going these 600 plus days without a win.
And it really highlights the difficult nature of fighting as opposed to any other sport where there's times where it's entirely likely that you're going to go a long time without competing again.
Wrestling was great because you lost a match on Saturday.
You were able to come back in the duel on Wednesday or even the next Saturday.
Seven days you had to go.
I mean, a lot of times, yeah, I mean, barring injuries or whatnot, I mean, it could be a year before you get to step back in the cage again, and then every single day you spend questioning.
And every single day, you also just end up putting so much pressure on yourself.
I mean, the biggest thing that I did wrong was I came into this sport, and literally 18 months after starting the sport, I was in a cage with Eddie Alvarez, top five guy in the world, beat Eddie Alvarez.
You know, your whole future depends on every single fight.
And then, instead of thinking about every single fight, you think about every single practice.
And instead of thinking about every single practice, you think about every single round in practice.
And not just every round, But every minute in practice.
So you hit me with a 1-2, immediately that's a loss in my mind.
So now I have to come back and get it.
So instead of just focusing on success, I was focusing on perfection.
So every single day I was trying to be perfect.
And you can't be perfect.
The greatest athletes in the world will tell you...
They are not perfect.
You know, they fail time and time and time again.
But I put all this pressure on myself to where I put myself in this prison of, Michael, you suck because you just lost to this guy who's not even signed to any organization at all, and you just lost to him in this sparring round.
And my view of what the loss was was different than my coach who watched it.
He said, no, you did all right.
You didn't lose horribly, but in my mind I lost horribly.
I would have got finished, blah, blah, blah, all the kind of like crazy stuff, you know?
So that's the thing too is I started focusing on success and not perfection.
You know, stop putting so much pressure on yourself to be perfect.
Just focus on being successful.
Now I'm focusing on the big picture of being successful instead of these little bitty instances where I'm trying to be perfect.
It's like, well, hey, how do you prepare for an opponent?
And honestly, I'd say almost 90% of my training is focusing on myself.
I mean, because if I put the right systems in place, if I get the right skill sets as sharp as they can be for fight night, there's not a guy in the lightweight division in the entire world that I think can beat me.
That last 10%, 90% focus on myself, the last 10% focus on the little intricacies, the little habits, the little tendencies that my opponents might have.
I mean, Eddie did a great job with it in the second round.
They ran for me and they circled and circled and circled.
Crazy maniac robot, come forward like a reckless abandon.
Michael Chandler's going to come and he's going to eat a thousand jabs.
And you can...
Keep them off you long enough to hopefully maybe win a decision.
They did a good job at that.
I wasn't cutting off the cage.
I wasn't using my feints.
I was trying to throw big shots because why?
We had that epic battle in 2011. I wasn't 100% confident in my training.
So that led me to just fight like a barbarian rather than a skillful veteran that has the skills and the abilities to be able to go out there and beat any lightweight in the world.
I had moved to a training camp where I wasn't getting...
We all need to look at ourselves, too.
I'm not telling people how to live their lives or train, but I needed to focus on a certain path to victory.
Find the easiest path to victory.
Bruce Lee, water.
Be like water.
Adapt, but also just say, okay, I'm not a long guy, not a tall guy.
I'm a shorter, powerful wrestler who can take anybody down, who's not going to get taken down, who has an overhand right that can knock anybody out in the entire world, and a gas tank that can come...
That will surpass any 25 minutes that I need to fight.
So I needed to focus on these certain five elements to be successful and not a thousand stuff.
I mean, training with Dominick Cruz and working on footwork and doing this and doing that and rollouts and all that kind of stuff.
It wasn't the right path to victory for me.
Therefore, I found myself almost out training myself.
I was training so much.
If I really just would have trained basics and good cardio, good strength and conditioning, good boxing, good wrestling, good grappling, That's easy to say after the fact, right?
I mean, the good thing about that training camp is they have opened themselves up to a lot of different techniques.
You know, I mean, I... I feel like I'm pretty athletic.
I feel like I catch on pretty quickly.
But really, to be successful, like if I was going to step into the cage with Khabib tomorrow, I'm going to focus on the basics that win.
I mean, you can win a whole fight with a one-two and good takedown defense, some takedown offense, and some good grappling, you know?
And that's it.
That's all you need.
And in my mind, the more I try to make this an intricate sport and a complicated sport, The more you're gonna find yourself having incremental Defeats, you know, like when I'm when I'm sparring outside of my element all of a sudden I find okay I tried this this round and I got beat up like you know, I got beat up which Messes up your confidence and all that stuff.
Do you feel like This is something that I struggle with, too, when trying to analyze fighters' performances and their future and what you can and can't do.
Do you feel like you go into MMA with a certain skill set?
You started out as a wrestler, and you're not going to be a karate expert.
You're not going to be a wonder boy.
You're not going to be a jujitsu expert, which you are as a powerful wrestler with great striking.
That's your skill set.
You're strong and you've got great cardio.
If you try to add a bunch of stuff to that and expand your skill level, do you feel like there's enough time in a career to really achieve the type of proficiency with, say, like...
Kickboxing or something like that that a real world-class kickboxer has.
Too many angles, too many different combinations, too many calls.
A coach can out-coach too.
A coach can out-coach and tell you seven different combinations in one minute when really it should have just been focus on cutting them off, focus on feints, focus on touching a leg, which is going to set up the punches, and focus on the punches that are going to set up the takedown.
I also would say now...
My coach, Henry Hooft.
Awesome kickboxing coach, has amazing techniques, but it's very, very, very basic.
We focus on being very, very proficient and very violent with the basics.
You're not going to see us throwing a bunch of crazy combinations or a bunch of crazy stuff.
So that works very well for me.
I started out with Gil Martinez in Vegas, just wrestling, just boxing.
And then I went to Alliance, and then now down in Florida with Henry.
But I have so much respect for him because not only did I spend 50 minutes inside the cage with the guy.
We both have our face bloodied and battered and stitches.
I mean, I got stitches in my lip.
We both have stitches in our lip and our eyes and eyebrows from each other.
But it's funny because when I sit there and I talk to people that I train in, I basically train in his training camp that he used to train in, and everybody always said, there's only one guy I can compare your work ethic to, your dedication to, your love for your family, your love for the sport, this, that, and the other thing, and that's Eddie.
So, I mean, me and Eddie have spoken a couple times.
I went up and trained with Frankie Edgar for two weeks a couple years ago, and he was out there training.
So we like, it's always just funny between me and him because we You know have fought and you know but it's funny but it's not like we have so much respect we don't hate each other.
No we've never done that but I mean we saw each other practice and I asked him to spar and he's like no man I don't want to get knocked out but but we were at the same we were at the same thing and uh same practices and stuff and it's kind of but you also get it's cool to get compared to a guy that you have fought because that immediately gives you that a much more respect for somebody because Because I know how hard I train, I know I show up early, and I'm always doing the little bit of extra, and everybody knows what I'm fighting for.
And I think him and I are very similar in that respect, so it's kind of cool.
I will say, but like I said, I ran into too many punches.
It was kind of crazy too, I think.
I actually spoke to one of the refs, one of the refs who called the fight for Eddie, or not one of the refs, one of the judges, like a couple months after I was at some event.
And he's like, oh yeah, well he rocked you in the second round.
And I was like, he didn't rock me in the second round, I tripped.
I basically tripped and it looked like I got rocked.
So it's just funny, that kind of stuff too, this sport is left up to...
But look, man, it's just a disgrace that you have people that really don't know anything about martial arts, and they're judging martial arts competitions.
I mean, could you imagine if you had an Ultimate Fighting Championship eight-man tournament with all the judges?
Because there's been so many fucking terrible ones.
Sometimes it's like a split decision.
You'll hear one you agree with, one you agree with, and one you're like, what the fuck?
And we'll look at each other.
I'll look at Anik, and I'll look at DC, and we'll be like, Jesus Christ!
How the fuck did someone think that person won that fight?
It's just bad, man.
It's just really, really, really bad.
And for a guy like you, who, you know, you have a win bonus and a show bonus in the UFC. So if you're in there and you do everything right and you get robbed, you just get robbed of a decision and on your record it goes to the loss.
And you could...
You know, you could protest it till the cows come home.
Nobody ever gets anything reversed.
When was the last time anybody got a decision reversed?
I mean, and also, too, I've never really even thought about the financials of it.
I never really thought...
It was always, to me, it was like a wrestling match.
It was a loss.
It was a loss on my record.
And then now...
I look back and I think, dang, man, if I would have fought just a little bit different here or that judge would have saw this a little bit different and we're talking a lot of money that I could have in my pocket or would have won.
I mean, and there's so many competitors or so many just the average human being is between, you know, 150 and 190. There's the big guys, there's the small guys, but we're kind of in that mid-range.
And I think a 165 weight class for a lot of us at 155, I mean, I would always probably stay at 155. I would love some cool matchups at 165 and be able to try to go for different belts and all that kind of stuff.
Obviously, that would be great.
But 155 is great for me, but there's definitely, I know some guys who are missing weights.
You saw Kevin Lee two weeks ago miss weight.
Khabib has obviously missed weight numerous times.
I mean, I put out a post a couple months ago where I really think, you know, I've been extremely blessed to have, throughout college wrestling, I mean, I've seen so many talented guys' careers ended because of injuries.
I had none.
You know, I had a couple sprains here and there.
I had a meniscus tear and whatnot.
Those are like six-week injuries.
No big deal.
Same thing in mixed martial arts.
I haven't really had any really bad injuries.
And I really do think it's because I keep my body in great shape and I do a lot of strength training.
My body is constantly overcompensating for the weights that I'm throwing around, the med balls I'm throwing around, the comfort zone, getting my body outside of my comfort zone day in and day out that my body has just kind of bulletproofed itself to a lot of serious injuries.
Obviously, it's fights.
I mean, it's a fighting and you're jacking up little limbs and hands and feet and all that kind of stuff here and there all the time, but nothing serious.
What I always focus on is strength plus speed equals power.
So we'll do one strength movement, whether it's a deadlift, whether it's a trap bar deadlift or a squat, straight into a speed movement, which would be like just a plyometric squat jump.
So you got the strength plus the speed, and that's how you continue to gain power.
In supersets.
So then maybe we're doing a bench press.
Bench press isn't the greatest workout, but it's focusing on the punching power.
I mean, a lot of times it's just exploding as hard as you can and catching yourself, exploding as hard as you can.
And we do a lot of that kind of stuff, whether it's squats to hurdle jumps or deadlifts to med ball slam to jump.
And that also...
It gets your heart rate up.
It's also just getting your body moving like crazy.
So, I mean, a lot of the stuff we're doing at my new gym, a lot of that programming is very similar to that where we have like a ripped class where it's resistance, interval, power, plyometric, and endurance.
The last couple camps down in Florida, we've had pretty much the same kind of schedule.
Monday morning is always a drill.
Tuesday is sparring.
Wednesday was wrestling.
Thursday was grappling.
Friday was sparring.
And then at night we go more individual, whether it's individual with one of the kickboxing coaches, one of the mid coaches with either Henry or Evan, or maybe it's a one-on-one with Kami Barzini, or maybe it's a one-on-one with Greg Jones, or it's a one-on-one with A grappling coach or it's your strength and conditioning.
A lot of times I couple them where I'll do an hour of strength work with 30 or 45 minutes of pads as well.
It all depends on the recovery.
If I feel myself getting overworked, I will cut one of those out and focus on which one's more important for that particular fight.
If I was fighting Goeti Yamauchi, who's a big-time grappler, big-time submission artist, so I focused a lot more on escapes, Defense, submission defense, and all that kind of stuff.
I was still focusing on strength and conditioning and striking, but I really threw in an extra couple grappling sessions there.
Do you have a head coach that decides when you're going to do what, and they look at you and say, you know, today we're going to take it easier today, we're going to do this?
I think, I mean, it's that kind of loose schedule that we always have, but Henry said that.
Henry and Kami Barzini has come in and really helped Helped manage some of that stuff.
We made a couple of different changes.
But I mean, yeah, they come in and they say, here's what we're going to do.
But then every now and then it's like, hey, tonight instead of an hour long, we're going to do 30 with me and then 30 with Kami.
Or Henry would do 30 minutes with pads, 30 minutes with Kami.
So it ebbs and flows.
And I think one of the biggest things about...
Mixed martial arts is an individual sport.
We're all grown men.
We all have our coaches that we're supposed to listen to, but I don't have to.
I don't have to do what any of these guys tell me to.
But I think that's why wrestlers are so successful, because they show up, they shut up, and you tell me what to do, and you ask me how high to jump, and I just jump.
Yeah, I've always said that I think there's two aspects of wrestling that make it the most important.
Skill set to have an MMA and one of them is the ability to take a fight to the ground or Stand back up like just to have that to have the ability to dictate where the fight takes place is gigantic But twos might maybe just as important is the mental strength wrestlers are always dehydrated.
They're always exhausted They're always pushing and they're they take pride in being the most miserable person.
Yeah, you know, there's something about that like having The ability to push through discomfort, which is just something that you cultivate in an amateur wrestling career.
I think you just get so comfortable being uncomfortable.
Your life sucks for five years straight, especially Division I college wrestling.
It's an emotional rollercoaster.
With that mental toughness that you're talking about, you don't just get mentally tough from working hard.
You get mentally tough from working hard and losing and then winning and then losing.
Having coach riding your butt because of this, and then you got a final, and you got a test, and you got this, and you got all this whole life that you're trying to manage and figure out while you're still trying to become a national champion.
So you're getting thrown into the hardest sport in the entire world physically, the hardest sport mentally, plus trying to have a college career, actually get your degree the whole reason you went to college.
And then really just being coachable and understanding delayed gratification.
I think so many people can come into an MMA gym and they have a great boxing coach and it's like they expect after the first mid-session that they're going to look like Roy Jones Jr. Whereas when I showed up to MMA, I realized, okay, I went to Vegas and I was training with Gray Maynard and Mike Pyle and Jay Huron and Tyson Griffin and Evan Dunham and all these great guys.
I knew I was going to take my licks for a long time.
It might have been a year before I won a round.
I was okay with that.
You have to be okay with the delayed gratification of life.
And now even as a 32-year-old, I understand that any aspect of life that I'm going into that's new, it's okay if I'm the guppy.
It's okay if I'm the lowest guy on the totem pole.
Even though I've accomplished so many great things and I've done some great things in life, I'm still a guppy in a lot of aspects of life.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not one of those guys that I get tapped and I'm like, oh man, good job, man.
I'm freaking ticked.
I'm pissed, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to show up the next day.
That doesn't mean I'm going to skip.
I mean, the funniest thing is you go to any gym around the country, if they have, I bet, you asked DC this at AKA, he's running the wrestling practice.
I bet the amount of guys that show up for sparring day and grappling day is different than the guys who show up on wrestling day.
Same thing at our gym.
We have 28 guys, 30 guys sparring on Tuesday.
All of a sudden, Wednesday rolls around and we're doing a wrestling practice and there's like seven guys that show up.
But you've got to get yourself to there, you know?
And be in the space, in the arena.
I can see the cage.
And after I started doing it, I mean, it was the Petricky Pitbull fight, the knockout.
Where that was the first time that I had really, really gotten—I had really hit that breakthrough where I walked into the cage.
I mean, Joe, I hated fighting.
I didn't really like it that much because I wasn't myself.
I wasn't present.
I was literally a caged animal, and I hated the way I felt.
I was peeing blood after fights because I was just going so crazy, and I was just—and obviously I gained a lot of fans because people loved the way I fight, but they didn't exactly care about my well-being that much.
But it wasn't until that fight where I got into the cage and I just started smiling because I thought, Michael, this is your home.
Like, this is your home.
Because I had visualized it so much.
Because the problem with what we talked about earlier is you only get to compete every six months, every eight months.
You don't know what that actually feels like.
And you can show up to the venue early and you can walk around.
You can smell the smells.
But there's nothing like competing in the cage.
You can't recreate it in sparring.
You can't recreate it in the gym.
The only really place you can recreate it is in your mind.
If you...
Just continue to remember.
I can remember my last fight like it was yesterday because I've actually gotten better at the skill of visualization because I think that's one thing that happens too is you sit down and maybe you're listening to this podcast and you're like, okay, I'm going to smell the smells of this.
I don't want to see the sides of this.
And then you have a really not great visualization session and you're like, man, that was stupid.
That guy's an idiot, you know?
But it really does take...
It really does take a second.
It does take actual practice to see and smell and hear and feel.
You need to see yourself getting put in compromising situations and then see yourself getting out of it.
You need to see yourself...
Performing at a ridiculously high level and how that's going to feel and how your brain is 100% bulletproof and how your heart rate is where it needs to be and how you are somehow confidently composed during those fights.
Because it used to be the bell would ring and I would go a thousand miles an hour and the times that you've seen me exhausted in fights, I mean I passed out, literally passed out in a fight before.
Right at the end of the round, thank God it was at the end of the round, Henry Hoof came and picked me up.
My feet were like pigeon-toed.
He was like dragging me back to my corner.
I sat down in the cage because I watched the video and all of a sudden my coach out here woke me up.
And I always land on top, and it's something that I set up, and I probably shouldn't put myself in a bad situation, but a lot of times I get it, so I like to go there.
I wish I would have had the hindsight to just not chase.
I mean, I have this thing where I love to hit people and run at them and go in for the kill, which has worked very well for me in my career.
But in that instance, if I would have either, number one, switched to southpaw because I could push off of it, I just couldn't lift it.
So I wish I would have switched to southpaw, or I would have just planted myself in the middle of the cage and waited for him to keep throwing kicks, and I would have kept handling it.
I mean, only one punch really got landed in that entire fight, and that was me dropping him.
I'm still up and conscious, and I wasn't taking damage.
I could imagine, like, you know, I mean, what's his name?
O'Malley hurt his foot and he was like, he couldn't even walk and he was falling down and he was about to start getting beat up.
Like, I was still on my feet.
I was still fighting.
Did it look really bad?
Did it look like a wounded deer out in the middle of the field?
You know, like, of course.
But...
I always say if this was back in the Viking days and you chop one of my legs off and it's me versus him to the battle of the death, I'm still winning that fight 10 times out of 10. So you wish the fight kept going?
I was like, hey, maybe if I get the crowd into it, maybe these guys will get out of here and let the fight go.
So I stood up and I was like, let's go!
And I was sitting on the stool and I freaking looked at him and I was like, you better hope they don't let me off this stool, boy, because I'm going to come break your face.
And then I stand up and then the guy pulls the stool and then a second later I'm on my butt.
That, to me, was one of the most frustrating ones when he fought Josh Koscheck and threw that punch afterwards, and he got kicked out of the UFC basically forever.
And now you see, like, Connor throwing dollies through windows and all this shit.
I watched him kickbox, actually, because, you know, Bellator does those kickboxing in MMA, and he kickboxed...
Fernando Gonzalez, I believe.
He's good.
He's a beast.
Especially in that kickboxing range when he knows there's no takedowns, when he knows there's no threat, and there's a different distance there, and he's really good at that kickboxing range.
Unless you're there to be able to really threaten with the takedown, he's going to be on his game.
And those guys, both Nick and Nate, have done a very good job of not being afraid to take some damage, let guys really swarm him.
And they do have that cardio, but I think they just have that stocked in just Confidence.
And almost just like that.
I've actually, the funny thing is like me and Michael Johnson sparred numerous times where we're kind of like talking to each other because that's against my, that was against my nature.
Like that, that cocky braggadocious talking during the fight type of deal.
I mean, once again, that's practice of, of almost an alter ego, almost a little bit different.
In my last couple of fights, you've seen me be more present, talking a little bit, almost kind of egging, egging them on, like not being afraid.
It used to just be like business, business, business, gotta fight.
100% present and in the zone, like in the zone, ready to die in there, not afraid to, but also willing to fight a very smart fight, smart, sharp, composed.
Missing shots, taking shots or taking takedowns when I want to and need to, and not being afraid to just fight like an extremely talented veteran rather than just a vessel of violence, you know?
Now I know why so many people just have a short MMA career and then they're done.
It's hard.
And that's with my career going really well.
I've signed some good contracts and been able to do some really good stuff and had some big fights and had some good success.
And I can imagine these people going through the grind and then all of a sudden you get injured or all of a sudden your manager screws you over and all of a sudden this and that.
And I've had a really relatively, not easy road, but I've had a really good path.
But I can see how people are like, man, I'm done with this.
And I think going back to your point too, where you talk about fighting like a veteran, I think it's all based on the confidence too.
And I see it time and time again.
Guys only have one option, and that's to fight like a crazy madman because they don't have 100% confidence in their skills.
And I think that's why you saw early in my career I fought like a madman because I wasn't 100% confident in my skills.
I was 100% confident in my cardio, my heart, my willingness to just take damage, my willingness to die inside the cage.
I was confident in that.
I stood against Eddie Alvarez.
I was 16, 18 months removed from a college wrestling room and said, I'm going to beat that guy.
I'm not supposed to beat him on paper.
I'm not supposed to beat him record wise.
I'm not supposed to beat him in any other universe besides right here in my mind.
I said, I'm going to beat that guy.
And I did it just by sheer toughness.
So I believe in my toughness and my cardio and my heart and all that kind of stuff.
But I didn't 100% believe in my skills.
So then all of a sudden you start to mature a little bit and you start to realize that you have these skills, you have these bag of tools to use, and you can use them not just effectively, but you can use them efficiently and smart.
Under pressure.
Under pressure, yeah.
And there's still times where you've got to...
You've got to gut check.
And that's a good thing that I know I have in my back pocket is I get in a fight with one of these guys and he's outmatching me.
He's outclassing me.
He has better technique than me.
He's on that night and I'm off.
He's technique-wise.
He's not tougher than I am.
He doesn't have better cardio than I do.
He's not willing to literally take as much damage as I am and keep coming forward.
He's not willing to do that.
And that's what I've always had the confidence in.
But now I have the confidence in my skill sets as well.
When you see a guy like, he's one of my favorite examples, Justin Gaethje, who's just a fucking savage, but you see him go undefeated in World Series of Fighting, what do they call it now?
And I think it goes back to, when I look at him, you know, it's not a knock on him or whatever.
I just don't think he has the confidence in his abilities.
I think...
But there's a fine line between having confidence in your abilities, confidence in your striking techniques, your ability to win any other way than a brawl.
Because I've had these thoughts too.
Man, I've sat...
And I've thought and the thought of me just outclassing somebody and piecing them up and the whole world watching and hearing the announcer saying, oh my God, Michael Chandler striking is on another level.
Look at this.
And how he strings together his punches with his kicks and blah, blah, blah.
That felt foreign and it felt uncomfortable to me because I didn't 100% truly believe in that stuff until recently.
And I think he only has the capacity to believe in himself as a brawler.
Therefore, that's the only way he knows how to win.
Therefore, in his sparring rounds, he's not...
I bet you and I could go watch him and he's the same Justin Gaethje in those sparring rounds as he is in the cage.
He's got a great following now after, like you said, just a couple of fights.
People believe in him.
People still right now...
They see this cyborg robot step into the cage.
That's what they think.
They don't even look at him as a man.
They don't look at him like he has a heart and a spirit in his brain.
They just look at a guy who goes out there and he's going to just freaking try to break somebody just through sheer, not beautiful technique, but just pressure and punch count and leg kicks and that kind of stuff.
And he's going to step in the cage against whoever he steps in the cage against, even though he lost his last two fights.
I'm like, holy cow, this stuff's working just after a couple of mid sessions, you know, But Justin's shown no indication that he even enjoys doing any other kind of fighting.
Eddie's got that boxing stance, and he gets low, and he puts a lot of weight on his legs, and he's got a lot of confidence in his hands, but Donald took advantage of that in his first fight in the UFC. When you saw Eddie beat Rafael dos Anjos and win the title, what was that feeling for you, knowing that you shared all those rounds with him, those two crazy wars?
I mean, it's just, when you really stop and think about how fucking tightly matched that lightweight division is, and how many killers are in that division, that is a fucking crazy division.
And in the UFC right now, you got Khabib, you got Tony Ferguson, you might have Max Holloway.
I mean, it's crazy that Max Holloway got pulled from the New York car because he was having trouble making weight.
I said when Rory went over to fight in Bellator, I said he very well might be, shout out to powerful Rory McDonald, very well might be the best 170 pound fighter in the world.
It's very possible.
It's very possible he is.
I mean, if he's not...
He's certainly in the mix.
And he might be on any given day.
This is the thing.
You just really don't know.
But if you look at his fight with Tyron Woodley, he essentially shut Woodley's main offense down and used a brilliant strategy to beat him by decision.
If you look at his fight with Maia, he got in the worst possible position with Maia.
Maia mounted on him in the first round when they're not even that sweaty yet.
And he was able to survive that and then pick Maia apart.
He's one of the best in the world.
He beats Lima, who I think is extremely underrated.
I think Lima is one of the very best fighters on the planet Earth.
And just people don't know because...
For whatever reason, Bellator just has not been able to capture the public's imagination the same way the UFC has.
Oh, there's not a day that goes by that I don't get...
I mean, shoot, you posted that thing this morning, and there was 287 comments in five minutes, and it was all like, finally, hey, when are you going to come?
And I get that every single day, so there's not a day that goes by that...
Especially after Eddie went over there and became the champion.
Everybody knows about it.
It's one of the things that I talked about when Eddie first came over to the UFC. I was telling people, go watch the wars that he had with Michael Chandler.
And then I've said that also, too, when I've seen you coaching people or being in someone's corner.
That right there is one of the best lightweights on the planet.
Why don't they just call it Paramount MMA? I think there was all kinds of new branding going on with the whole new Paramount stuff and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, I've talked about this so many times people get angry at me, but what would you think about the idea of fighting in a big open area without a cage?
Like a big open area, like a basketball arena, like a basketball court, like that size.
If you had like wrestling hats where you have boundary lines.
Well, yeah, because I think that there's something about a cage that presents an artificial boundary, and that artificial boundary can be used both to contain someone and to get out, to get up.
Like, you could obviously wall walk and get up out.
I just think...
It makes takedowns much more difficult when there's not a cage, because you're not going to press someone against a cage and just scoop their legs out from under them.
You have to get a legitimate takedown, like an open area takedown.
And it makes getting up much more difficult.
When someone does take you down, you can't just scoot your back up to the wall and get back up.
You're going to have to figure out a way to actually get up.
Going back to being a wrestler, wrestlers coming in should not just expect that they're going to be able to take guys down and not get taken down.
I used to get taken down all the time off the cage, and I'm like, man, I'm a Division I wrestler.
Why am I getting taken down?
But it is completely different.
I mean, obviously, I know a lot about maneuvering the body and scrambling out and all that kind of stuff, but adding the cage wall is a lot different, you know?
I mean, down in Florida, we don't have one, and we just spar in the open.
There's cage walls.
There's cage walls that, like if you're in training camp, if you've got a fight coming up soon, you'll spar in this certain area where they might put some tie pads on the floor, like don't go past this, and then there's your other barrier type of deal.
My gym, we don't have a cage.
We just have a cage wall and then a padded wall, too.
When they started talking about all the ideas where they were talking about putting a moat around the cage and sharks and alligators and like, we're really going to do this thing big.
Oh, it was actually MMA? Yeah, where you literally tied the guy's arm together.
So you were in an arm wrestling situation, and they taped your arms together, and then you were punching each other and kicking each other, and guys were throwing arm bars.
Yeah, with the arm wrestling podium in front of you.
That's why you've seen all these organizations come and go or these kind of crazy ideas.
Nothing is sticking in a lot of instances.
That's why it's cool to see the growth of MMA. It's a cool time to be a part of this generation of MMA as MMA grows.
Like you talked about, Asking about myself, I mean, you're seeing all kinds of guys having success with karate style and kind of on your toes bouncing kickboxing style, point kickboxing style.
And you're seeing a lot of people come in because it's cool, it's flashy, the fans love it, the promoters love it.
Yeah, it's terrible if it's your knee, but it's like awesome for fans, but then the fans are like, half of them were ticked off, half of them were pumped.
But when a guy's making his debut and you are a world champion or a former world champion at this point, what inspires you to call a guy like that out?
But it also, I mean, I also woke up to 150 mentions on Twitter, so it's like, well, at least people are talking.
You know, at least people are talking.
I mean, that's the other thing, too, is always navigating the narrative and talking about...
Getting people to talk.
Getting people to talk about, I mean, over the last couple months, the amount of times, as soon as Khabib fought, the amount of people that were just talking like, hey, you're the only guy that can match Khabib's wrestling.
You're the only guy that can nullify his wrestling.
I mean, to get yourself in the conversation, that's what it all is.
Well, Styles definitely make fights, and that was what became very interesting after the Al Iaquinta fight, where people were looking at, okay, what about high-level wrestlers who have more refined striking?
And how do they line up?
And Kevin Lee was a big one that people kept talking about, but you were a big one that people kept talking about, too.
Because you were saying that you think you could beat him.
So chinks in the armor showed what happens when Khabib can't take you down.
I mean, it's tough whenever the one thing that you've always been used to dominating with isn't working, and then you're stuck throwing punches and you're in, you know...
He's a little bit behind in the striking aspect.
Dude, I've got a ton of respect for the guy.
He's a mauler.
I mean, at certain times he looks unbeatable.
He has looked unbeatable where I've looked at it and other people have looked at it and people that have fought him that I've talked to.
Certain people get to that breaking point and they break and they concede and they go into their shell and they say, I did a good job, but this one's on him.
Well, guys who don't have that deep, deep wrestling background and they face a guy who does, there's moments in the fight where you see that, where you saw that thousand-yard stare in Barboza's eyes where he's like, fuck.
I can't keep doing this.
He goes into defensive survival mode.
And when a guy does have a deep background in wrestling and also can strike, that's what makes it interesting.
And this is why MMA is such a complex sport because there's so many variables.
There's so many techniques you can use.
There's so many situations where you might have an advantage or your opponent might have an advantage.
And it's just...
We live for these matchups, these stylistic matchups.
So when something like that happens and a guy like Khabib has a fight where all these questions get presented, that's where a guy like Michael Chandler comes into the mix.
I mean, you watch him spar or you watch him hit mitts or you watch his composure and his confidence while he's sparring and doing all that kind of stuff.
You'd think he's been striking since he was 11 years old.
Especially for a guy like you, if you do have something like an ankle injury, like that one fight, and then you've got to stay offline for a few weeks.
And I think my legs or my feet in general, it's something that I've continued to work on.
I mean, you've got to look at each...
Each individual joint from hands to wrists to elbows to knees to ankles.
I mean, in all of my strength and conditioning work, a lot of it is very, very hard, very, very tough, very, very violent.
And then some of my stuff is stability stuff, core stability stuff, hip flexibility, hip strengthening stuff, because that's where all your power and all that kind of stuff comes from.
Yeah, we had training the other day and we had about 12 people in there.
We were shooting some content and had some training and we had to bring towels back there because people were coming out and they're like, hey, you got any towels?
Because people were sweating their butt off.
And I think we're going to get some cool infrared panels to hang on the ceiling that can kind of add a little bit of heat to where it's not hot yoga, but it's definitely warm enough when you're going through your flows.
You're definitely opening up the muscles and you're getting that sweat out.
You literally lay on that thing, and if you know what it feels like to get your so-as worked on, you just kind of wobble and wiggle until it hits it, and then you can lift your legs.
This guy does all kinds of videos.
Right.
He's hitting the psoas, he hits the glutes, he hits the quads, he hits literally everything, and he's got the psoas mini.
So I've been playing on that the last couple months.
I usually drink one blender bottle, one serving of it as I'm going into practice, and then I'll have another one going into the next practice, and I'll have a protein shake after.
I try to do a soft tissue massage or a sports massage, kind of rolfing ART almost every week.
I mean, like I was saying, I'm on my roller every single day before practice.
And that's when I really see, you know, like these times after a fight when I'm kind of Not working out as much or I'm not, you know, not everything is on because you can't be on all the time.
You know, everybody acts like they're on 365 or 365 days a year, but they're really not.
You know, after a fight, I kind of go less robot mode, you know, break my diet a little bit, enjoy staying up late, enjoy just doing whatever.
And then...
That's when I really realize, holy cow, I've been on my roller in four days, and that's why my back is hunched over and stuff.
I was sparring with Nick Lentz two training camps ago.
And I threw a leg kick as he lifted his opposite leg up and literally just dead-legged me.
Like, Charlie horsed me with his knee.
It wasn't even supposed to happen.
He didn't mean to do it.
I didn't...
I was trying to throw the leg kick.
And I got the worst deep muscle, like, bone contusion in the middle of my, like...
Where your quads meet, right between the muscles.
And I could not walk.
I fell right to the ground.
Practice was over.
This was like three weeks before the fight, and I had to go see my guy CK in Florida, and he just had to work the heck out of it, man.
And I think that's one of the biggest things.
And I just talked to one of the guys at Mark Pro about, when we talk about injuries, we used to think rice, you know, rest, ice, compression, elevation, and that kind of stuff is, there's some conflicting kind of knowledge on all that kind of stuff, whereas instead of resting it, get in there right away and start moving it and mobilizing it with certain things.
Obviously, you've got a broken leg and you need to get it set and get it rested, but...
I mean, a lot of times it's just, you almost got to pick and choose.
There's only so many hours in the day, too, you know?
So it's like, you know, you're waking up and you've got only so much time before you go to practice.
And then you only have so much time to recover before the next practice.
And it's one of those things where I'm always getting a massage.
I'm always working on, you know, maybe I'm Doing massage and chiropractic during one camp, you know, it's almost like you got to pick and choose your battles.
If you have an awesome man warehouse like this where everything's in one spot, I would do it all every day.
But if you're down in Florida and this is, you know, cryo is 45 minutes away and your massage is 20 minutes the other direction and you're fighting Florida traffic, you really got to pick and choose your Your recovery methods, you know?
Now, your gym in Nashville, this is your gym, and I was following you on social media where you're putting up pictures, you're putting everything together.
I wanted four walls and a roof where people can walk in and say, They're looking for a change or they're looking to, whether it's get stronger, get faster, lose that weight that they finally have been putting off.
I wanted a place where people can say, because of that guy or those people or that coach, I was able to enrich my life.
I was able to become a better person.
I was able to increase my self-confidence or just enrich life.
Yeah, so I mean we we have a lot of a lot of stuff going on I I've almost been fighting a decade now.
I've been Started out in Missouri went to the West Coast now I'm training on the East Coast and I've been to Canada been to numerous training camps in between and And the gym is called training camp.
And the reason is because my life always revolves around training camp, you know?
And there's a difference between, like we just talked about, in training camp and out of training camp.
We're both from Missouri, so it's closer to home where we grew up.
We were living in San Diego together and wanted to just move back closer to the Midwest.
We love the city.
We have a bunch of friends in the music industry, so we, you know, Had some friends there already and visited and went to a couple award shows and said, man, this place is cool.
We have 3,000 square foot of just fitness area where it's rolled rubber, flooring, turf, plate-loaded machines, squat racks, dumbbells, group fitness area.
Right next to that, we have 3,000 square foot of mat space where we're going to have a youth wrestling club that has a half wall around it.
We started a youth wrestling club this week, coupled with another 3,000 square foot of mats.
1,500 there, 1,500 of the Fuji Tatami mats for boxing, kickboxing, BJJ, MMA, all that kind of stuff.
And then that 900 square foot yoga studio, plus...
We have our recovery area that we have a guy named Scott Dunnaway at ChiroStrengths.
He's a chiropractor, ART, and corrective exercise guy.
Plus, we're trying to bring in another massage therapist that's going to be there three days a week.
And then I'm also going to talk to a cryo guy as well who has an extra tank that I'm going to try to set something up with, I think.
That's awesome, man.
So then when everything's under one roof, then we're like...
Even with your nutrition stuff, it's like, oh, man, I've got to go Got to go make a Whole Foods run to get my almond milk and my avocados because I make my own breakfast but the rest of my stuff is in MegaFit Meals containers.
So there's always a grocery store to go to or there's always a media obligation or there's always something and it's all time management.
It was always interesting when I heard people like, yeah, I train 10 hours a day and I'm like...
Really?
How do you train 10 hours a day without your body falling apart, you know?
Then I'm like, okay, pass out, wake up, do it all over again, Groundhog's Day, embrace the monotony, chicken, broccoli, eggs, avocado, let's do it for eight weeks, and...